I once heard of an Ivy League professor who had written 50 constitutions. All of them collapsed, including the one for the college boat club. If that gentleman is not now advising the Convention on the Future of Europe, someone very like him surely is.
On the opening day of the convention in March 2002, its president, ValZry Giscard d’Estaing, bravely compared the congress to the Philadelphia Convention, which wrote the US constitution in 1787. One might equally make a comparison with the conferences which created the Dominion of Canada. Unlike the constitutions of the Ivy League professor, the products of those meetings have stood the test of time. So, in 100 years’ time, should we be expecting to travel via Giscard European Airport and the Route TranseuropZenne Giscard, just as we already use Washington International Airport and the Macdonald-Cartier Freeway, honouring bygone constitution-builders? Confident that I won’t be around to be proved wrong, I say, ‘Aucune chance.’
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