The EU Constitution is still not dead. Despite the fact that it has been voted down in France and Holland, it is, like Jason and Freddy, proving remarkably difficult to nail down the lid of its coffin. Writing in the invaluable Brussels Journal, one British MEP notes <a href=”

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/42

“>this:

“Before the French and Dutch referendums, I predicted that, if our neighbours voted “No”, the EU would ignore the result and implement the constitution as though nothing had happened. The Brussels elites have followed the script to the letter…Two weeks after the referendums, the European Parliament voted through dozens of Bills that cited the constitution as the source of their authority. One which happened to catch my eye was a report proposing that the British and French representatives on the UN Security Council be merged into a single EU seat. The judicial basis for such a development, said the report, was “the European Constitutional Treaty, which creates a legal personality for the Union and a European Minister for Foreign Affairs”. No one was so indelicate as to point out that, without the constitution, the EU has no treaty-making powers. Instead, we carried on as though nothing had changed.”

Meanwhile on Sunday, Luxembourg will hold its referendum on this rotting, stinking not yet corpse of a constitution. Why? Because the Luxembourg PM is doing everything in his power to revive the ratification process, and a yes vote from mighty Luxembourg might push that along by giving the constitution a few sad scraps of democratic legitimacy. In fact, Such a ‘yes’ ought to be a slam dunk (that’s why it’s being held) for the reasons that the London Times explains:

“This bastion of “Old Europe” has grown rich off the fat of the EU. It receives €1,700 per head per year from Brussels, five times more than any other member state. Its capital, Luxembourg City, is packed with EU institutions, from the European Court of Justice to the European Court of Auditors, and parts of the European Parliament and Council of Ministers.”

And yet, even here, the race is, pundits say (opinion polls are banned in the run-up to a vote) going to be close. My guess is that the yes camp will prevail, but there is still some hope that enough Luxembourgers will be independent-minded enough to vote no to the ‘jo’. A no vote will come with another plus. Luxembourg’s wretched and delusional PM, weepy Jean-Claude Juncker, has promised to resign.

Vote Nee!

The truly obsessive can follow the whole thing here.