Is Europe Dying?

I was going to write about this topic earlier weekend when the vote in France as the 'Non' won by 54%. But since today was the vote in the Netherlands, I decided to wait for that result and reflect on the results overall.

As predicted (and unfortunately in my eyes), "No" also won in the Netherlands by a large 65% margin. Read the full article in: http://estadis.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/286324.html

This was a much wider margin to the 51-54% prediction surveys were making before hand. The result in France is widely seen as the culprit for the growth of the no vote.

En sondeos previos se hablaba de una ligera ventaja del no 51-54% pero pues claramente el resultado en Francia hizo que la gente votara por el "no".

A lot of people say that the "no" campaign in the Netherlands was very similar to that in France and a los of articles that explain the "why" of the result make reference to them. In these campaigns, the focus was not on the actual European Union consitution but in showing discontent and that they were not happy with their domestic government. All of this is valid of course, but I feel that it had nothing to do with the actual constitution that was put to this referendum.

I reckon, perhaps, if they voted no because they believed that expanding the European Union would affect their standard of living, employment and social safe net then that was a worthy "no" vote. But if they voted because they were concerned about immigration and the inclusion of Turkey, then I believe that's not fair.

I know some people are worried about the cultural identity of Europe but that's no reason to be Anti-Turkey. A teacher once told me that there were two ways to define your identity. One, was by affirmation ("I am Mexican") and the other by denial ("I am not a woman"). Europe is a continent full of history... it has no need to define itself as "Not Muslim" or "Not Turkish".