It may seem like clever domestic politics, but Ségolène Royal’s plan to re-run France’s referendum on the EU constitution looks like a disaster waiting to happen: both for France and Europe.

Ms Royal will win plaudits for her commitment to giving the French people their democratic voice, should she win the French presidential elections this spring. Nicolas Sarkozy, her rival, has already committed himself to trying to negotiate a "mini" version of the constitution and to ram it through the national assembly.

Scoring points off the "undemocratic" Mr Sarkozy is the easy bit. The tough part comes if Ms Royal wins the election and has to see through her promise.

By announcing a poll in France in 2009, she is increasing the likelihood that the EU will never have a new institutional settlement. If France has a referendum then the pressure will be on others - like the UK, Netherlands and Poland - to follow suit.

A No vote is certain somewhere along the line, leaving Europe in a state of turmoil, possibly leading to a split and the development of a "core" group of countries committed to more integration. Although some in Paris, Brussels and Berlin like the idea, most agree it would be better for the Union to stick together if possible.

But what about if the country voting No is France - by no means an unlikely outcome given that French voters rejected the constitution in 2005 and only approved the Maastricht Treaty by the tiniest of margins in 1992?

Ms Royal thinks voters can be won over if the treaty is made more "French": perhaps by adding a protocol enshrining social rights or some new clause to make the European Central Bank less interested in inflation and more interested in economic growth.

Dream on. The British will never accept the first idea and the Germans are highly unlikely to approve any changes to the ECB’s statutes, particularly if they are aimed at loosening the bank’s grip on inflation. Disappointed French voters may then be even more likely to vote No to the Mark II treaty than to the first.

Ms Royal’s plans may win her some votes this spring and make her look like a good democrat, but they could put in jeopardy the reforms Europe needs and France’s own position in the EU.

Andrew Duff, the British MEP and thinker on the future direction of the European Union, is known by some in Brussels as one of the "astronauts". How come? "He’s on another planet," says one ally of Jos Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president.
Although Mr Duff’s enthusiasm for further European integration is not shared - to put it mildly - by large sections of public opinion, one has to give him credit for thinking out loud about what the EU should do next with its comatose constitution.
The constitutional debate is not over, in spite of the obituaries written for the treaty when it was rejected by French and Dutch voters in the spring of last year. It is true the original text is dead as a doornail, but a rebranded and slimmed-down version will come back on to the political agenda next year.
German diplomats believe that by January - when Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, takes over the EU presidency - 18 out of the 25 current member states will have ratified the original treaty, placing a strong moral and political obligation on the others to agree to many of the proposals in the original text.

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