First it was Non. Then it was Nee. And now it seems it could be ‘We want our currency back’ as at least one Minister in Berlusconi’s Italian government has started making noises about a referendum to bring back the Lire - also in the Times.

Is this a another serious threat to the European Project or just a bit of popularist opportunism? Only time will tell, I suppose.

But what it does show is an important knock-on effect of this week’s referenda - by saying ‘no’ the French and Dutch peoples have implicitly given other nations ‘permission’ to say no themselves, not just to the EU Constitition but on other matters where the drive to deeper integration turns out not to have quite the benefits that people expected or hoped for.

What happens next is going to be an interesting test of the ability and astuteness of Europe’s politicians.

The old post-war rationale for the EU, the one which said that European co-operation from the top down would serve to prevent further wars between what we once the ‘Great Powers’ is no longer relevant to a generation for whom the Second World War is an ever more remote piece of history and about as relevant to modern political culture as, say, the Battle of Agincourt. You should never say never, of course, but the idea that idea that Western Europe, at least, could again go to war over matters of territory and resources is no so remote as to be negligible.

The challenge now seems to be how to rebuild and re-orientate the European project from the bottom up, to found the next stage in Europe’s development on the wishes of its people and not simple that of a small political and bureaucratic elite. It sounds obvious - in fact it should be obvious - but I think Europe has reached the very limits of what can be achieved without fully engaging its people, without having a proper democratic foundation for its role and activities.

Federalism is a dirty word to the Eurosceptic right. Federalism in the enemy. Federalism means the loss of national sovereignty.

No it doesn’t. European federalism does not have to mean that more and more power is turned over to Brussels and to a Parliament which, for all that its elected by the [some of] the people still seems wholly remote from people’s day to day concerns. Not if you have a federal constitution which clearly defines and delimits the boundaries between the authority of the federal core and that of its component nation states, one which says that federal influence extends so far and no further.

That seems, to me, to be message of the week for Europe’s politicians - good fences make for good neighbours.

That’s what the eurosceptics need to understand about the idea of a European Constitition, that a properly written consititution, one which clears defines its purpose, which says, in effect, that ‘Europe ends here’ is ultimately their best possible defence against the kind of ‘feature creep by treaty’ which allows their jealously guarded sovereignty to ebb away, in a piecemeal fashion, to Brussels.

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