A year and less than a month after we joined the European Union, we have our first major EU crisis.

The French people will, in all probability, vote against ratifying the Constitutional Treaty.

Romano Prodi, using pre-electoral hyperbole, said a No vote would mean “the end of Europe”. EU commissioners and spokespersons have all denied there is a Plan B, or even a Plan C, in case France, and The Netherlands on 1 June, vote against the Treaty.

What happens next is still mostly uncharted waters, but the EU has developed over the years by handling such crises and finding a way out of them. Maybe the EU is not as linear as one would wish it to be (and mainly the revolt against the Constitution is precisely against an attempt to create some sort of structure in the whole Union) but that is the way the EU has developed.

What we will most probably see, over the coming months, is a deepening reflection on what caused the voters of France, and/or The Netherlands, and/or many of those countries where they had referenda, to vote No.

Very few of the No voters in France are against the EU as such. They do not aspire to leave the Union. But they want a different Union to emerge from the ruins of the present one.

Domestic politics are playing an important role. Alexis de Tocqueville described a similar crisis in January 1848, just before King Louis-Philippe was overthrown because his government was weak, mistrusted and unable to tackle social issues.

Three years ago, 82 per cent of the people of France elected Jacques Chirac as the only alternative to Jean-Marie Le Pen but today they want to get rid of Chirac. They do not want to vote for him again.

The following is a rough guide to the five main reasons why some people are voting No today:

• The Constitution further centralises power in Brussels, stripping countries of more sovereign rights.

• It advances an excessively free-market “ultra-liberal” agenda.

• It opens the way for Turkey’s entry into the EU.

• The Constitution can only be revised by unanimous approval.

• A rejection will provoke a “salutary crisis” opening the way for a proper European debate.

It is extremely significant that the revolt is starting in France. The French Republic is the result of a 1,000-year process of enlargement within a centralised framework. But the EU, which has come together in just 50 years, has, over the past years, preferred ever-increasing enlargement but not enough deepening, or centralisation.

To give just one example, after Charles de Gaulle refused the UK’s accession in January 1963, and before the UK, Ireland and Denmark joined 10 years later, a referendum was held in France. No such referendum was held prior to the accession of other countries, such as Finland, Sweden and Austria, nor indeed before the latest accession of 10 countries including Malta.

It was not even possible for the French Parliament to debate Turkish membership before the EU leaders decided to open negotiations last December. Turkish accession is the straw breaking the French camel’s back.

And The Netherlands is in deep shock, now that the EU has opened the dykes to Muslim immigration that could become a flood if and when Turkey joins. In both countries, a commitment to hold a referendum on Turkey’s accession could have saved the day, but it was not made.

In France, President Jacques Chirac has been less than honest in presenting Brussels and its policies as more the problem than the solution for the high rate of French unemployment. In his desperate efforts to sell the Constitution, Chirac has promised that the Treaty can help protect France’s social model from the threats of the free market, which they describe as “Anglo-Saxon ultra-liberalism”.

At least, however, Chirac’s arguments have been countered by none other than the president of his own party, Nicolas Sarkozy, (maybe his future successor), who argued that it was precisely France’s social model which was responsible for the unemployment rate of 10.2 per cent.

“It is not ideological mimicry,” he said, “to want to draw inspiration from those in Europe who have found the way to full employment and turn one’s back on the methods of those that have ended up producing mass unemployment.”

There is life beyond today’s referendum and the European Constitution. Jean-Claude Juncker, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg and the current head of the European Council, has urged the other countries to continue with their ratification process. His advice must be rejected: if the French vote No, it means the Treaty is killed. The Union must learn to respect the wishes of its peoples.

In case of a No vote, the Union’s governments should salvage some of the Treaty’s provisions, like, for instance, foreign policy. There may be other areas where key provisions can be saved, such as the double majority voting rules, the creation of an EU President.

Mainly, however, the Union must continue to tackle its current problems: the euro, the issue of non-growth in the main economies, agreeing on a budget settlement, working hard on the Lisbon agenda. The Treaty would have helped in all these tasks, but the Union’s leaders must be realists, and show they are democratic at heart: if the people say Nay, there must not be any effort at undermining what the people have decided. The re-writing of another Treaty will have to come later, much later.

Unless the EU is made to work, and its people can see that it works, it is no use trying to flog such a dead horse on voters.

A feeble economy and political malaise, instability and the current mood of Brussels bashing are pushing the EU towards the brink and threaten to unleash months of paralysis. In Germany Chancellor Schroeder has been forced to call early elections, Italy sees Silvio Berlusconi being snowed under huge economic problems and a deep unpopularity in the country, and many leaders in central Europe are barely clinging to power. And many embattled leaders are finding that Brussels-bashing brings in votes. The best that can be expected is months-long paralysis and a cull of the ‘lame duck’ leaders.