Looking at this report on the responses to the failure of the Irish referendum on the new EU treaty, it’s clear that the many of the movers and shakers simply don’t get what their problem is.

I am generally not a big fan of the referendum as a process, but it is a valid process, and the degree that the Eurocrats are claiming that it is somehow illegitimate, they are reinforcing every negative stereotype about them.

The problem is quite simple, and has 3 parts:

1. The new constitution is too damn complex. At 250 pages, no one understands all of its sections, and so this breeds distrust.
2. The response to the failure of the last constitution, where France and the Netherlands had referenda that failed was to eliminate referenda, which further breeds distrust in the process.
3. Among the Eurocrats, there seems to be the idea that the decision making structures of the EU must be insulated from politics, which means that they are insulated from democracy, which further breeds distrust.

Simply put, in order to update the EU governance structures such that they will win the support of the public, or at least the Irish public, since any change in Ireland mandates a referenda, these structures must be seen as less opaque and more democratic.