With a resounding "non," French voters on Sunday rejected the European Union's draft constitution, with 55 percent opposing what would have been the legal framework for the newly expanded, 25-member club. French President Jacques Chirac bet his political future on the fact his people would, in the end, support the constitution. Yet even after numerous televised pleas, Chirac failed to sway his people, who in the end sided with anti-globalization and labor activists like McDonalds-destroying Jose Bove, who claimed the constitution would eliminate jobs and lead to the wholesale dismantling of the French social system.

The rejection of the constitution by France, a founding member of the EU, is being widely seen as the greatest crisis to ever plague Brussels. In Germany, newspaper editorialists are asking what the Gallic drubbing of the constitution will mean for traditionally close ties between Paris and Berlin and what the future now holds in store for a troubled EU.

The financial daily Handelsblatt measures the vital stats in Brussels one day after the French vote and finds a weak EU pulse. "With the results of its referendum, France has thrown the community into a deep institutional crisis," the paper's editorialist writes. But this wasn't some on-the-job accident or anomaly. If the polls don't deceive, the Dutch will also reject the constitution later this week.  Neither the French nor the Dutch approve of the constitution, and that doesn't come as a complete surprise. "The constitution may simplify the decision-making process in an expanded union," the paper opines. "It may strengthen the rights of parliament and create the prerequisites for a common foreign and security policy. What it doesn't do, however, is answer the two existential questions facing the union: How do you find the appropriate balance between social justice and free markets in Europe during a time of increasing globalization and what the EU's geographical boundaries should be?" In a number of countries, high unemployment and the feeling that social systems are under threat -- especially in the EU's founding states -- sentiment has turned against the union. "Currently," it concludes, "Europe isn't mature enough for structures like those of a country like Germany, it's not ready for a common foreign minister and it's not ready to accept new members." But that is no reason to delay the process of European consolidation. A pause for recuperation after this setback, the paper warns, could lead to a "collapse" of the EU.

"If the European Constitution were to fail as a result of the stubborn French or Dutch, it would be a historical farce," writes the center-left Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. "Because none of the many agreements used by governments so far during the first 50 years of European Union to integrate the continent have been as democratic as this." This "Europeanization from above," far removed from the citizens, didn't seem to bother anyone -- at least not until the Treaty of Maastricht. But since the start of the 1990s, when Brussels conceived the euro and paved the way for the EU internal market with more and more regulations, this consensus of acquiescent acceptance disappeared. "The EU's eastward expansion, more executed than politically brokered, fomented sentiment among Western Europeans that they had been handed an anonymous leviathan -- an omnipotent obscurity that is spreading without any limits." It is against those feelings -- and not the close to 500-page-thick constitution -- which has drawn the wrath of "no" voters. Now, the EU has been dealt a blow, a setback. It also shatters a reorganization that could have shown the EU the way out of its internal loneliness.

The Web site of the influential intellectual weekly Die Zeit sifts through the political consequences the "non" vote is likely to have in France. Chirac has pledged a "new and strong signal" (read: a government shake-up) and the paper speculates that one will likely be taking the axe to unpopular Prime Minister Jean Pierre Raffarin, whom it says could fall in days. "After months of passionately led debates for and against the EU constitution," it writes, "a founder and core nation behind the expansion of the EU has fallen into crisis and has allowed itself to be pushed into the corner of the nay-sayers. Now the country is danger of entering a turbulent time with an uncertain ending." In 1992, Die Zeit notes, the French only approved the Treaty of Maastricht by a thin margin (a vote it called a "miracle"). Their fears about joblessness, job displacement and social dumping havn't shrunk any -- they have grown. "And no one can say that the country didn't discuss Europe enough. The French have listened to everything, they have debated and made their decisions: We don't want this."

By choosing to go ahead with the referendum, notes an analysis piece in the center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Jacques Chirac has has suffered the worst setback of his political career. He could have allowed his parliament to approve the constitution and his staff at Elysee Palace advised him to do exactly that. "But Chirac believed victory as well as the positive attitude of his fellow countrymen about the European integration process was certain." But one year after EU expansion, which brought 15 new member states to the elite club, the French took stock and the majority didn't like what they found. Its opponents said it contained everything that citizens disapproved of in a greater Europe. Nor did it help that Chirac, the main man in the pro-constitution camp, never did much to disguise his animosity towards Giscard d'Estaing, the constitution's French draftsman. Now, Chirac is in damage control mode for France. He has ruled out the possibility of resigning himself, "but he will shuffle his government and name a new prime minister. And his choice for that position will also provide an indication of the new political direction the French president has in mind." One thing that is unlikely, the paper writes, is the suggestion of a revote on the referendum in winter 2006, since it would come just a few months before national elections and would be unpalatable for French politicians.

The Financial Times Deutschland writes that the French referendum has become the "first major stumbling block" of the European constitutional project. And the day after tomorrow, the next round of nail-bitingly close voting will happen in the Netherlands. So what's the problem with the constitution, the paper asks? It could hardly be any concrete shortcomings. "On the contrary, the impression is emerging that the mistake lay in the fact that the (EU) wanted to do too much good at one time. Because the higher the demands and the more clearly the text was written, the greater the suspicion grew in voters that important policies were being written into stone for eternity." In France the debate was mainly driven by domestic political issues. But it was also driven by accusations that the text laid out a liberal social model (e.g. business and globalization-friendly) that is rejected by many French people. "A number of proponents of the constitution noted the opposite was the case: the constitution offered the chance to strengthen the old European model," the paper writes. "And this, in turn, is precisely the reason that many Britons reject the constitution. For them, the text doesn't allow markets to be as free as they would like." If the constitutional project completely fails in the end, the paper concludes, the expanded EU will desperately need more efficient ground rules and the European Parliament, which is elected by the people, must be given greater power.

An opinion piece posted on Tagesschau.de, the Web site for Germany's largest public broadcaster, ARD, argues that France's "non" couldn't have come at a worst time for Europe. Nevertheless, one shouldn't cry wolf when talking about crises in big institutions, the site warns. After all, how many times has NATO been declared dead? The European Union has survived crises, too: Maggie Thatcher's "constipated" stance over Britain's EU rebate, the Danes' rejection of the Maastricht Treaty, Ireland's "no" to the Treaty of Nice. "Still, France's rejection of the constitution has created a situation that is a lot more serious than any other in EU history," Tagesschau writes. "Unlike in previous situations, this time a number of negative factors are coming into play: For the first time, Germany and France have different aims. The Paris-Berlin axis served in recent years as the motor and stabilizer of the European Union. Chirac and Schroeder, standing shoulder to shoulder, have made a number of things happen: eastward expansion, European defense, the draft of a European foreign policy and much more." A politically humiliated Chirac and a paralyzed Schroeder (who could be voted out of office later this year) won't be able to accomplish anything else -- at least in the near future. There won't be any agreement this year on the EU budget, questions are being raised about whether the accession treaties with Romania and Bulgaria will be signed and whether or not membership talks will begin with Turkey.