Dermot Ahern, the foreign affairs minister, could not have been more clear last week when he started preparing the ground for Ireland’s referendum on the European constitution.

No matter what happens in France today or in the Netherlands on June 1, “we will proceed in any event. Renegotiation is not on the agenda.” Faced by the probability that tens of millions of Europeans will reject their new constitution, Europe’s politicians are circling their wagons: Europe does not take no for an answer.

There remains a remote chance that the people of France and the Netherlands will confound the opinion polls and endorse the constitution. But it is far more likely that, by the end of this week, two of the union’s founding members will have rejected the 474-page tome that was cobbled together after years of wrangling and which, our leaders would have us believe, paves the way for a more democratic and more accountable European Union.

However, it does not take a Eurosceptic to notice that at the first sign that their constitution might get thrown out, Europe’s politicians and bureaucrats take flight from democracy and seek refuge in the more comfortable world of inter-governmental negotiations. The constitution that is trumpeted as a triumph in democracy will not be allowed to suffer defeat at the hands of the people.

By their reaction, Europe’s leaders reveal the arrogance that has got them into this mess in the first place. The Nice treaty was poorly constructed and deserved to be rejected; yet when given the opportunity by the Irish electorate to call a halt to the constitutional project and rethink the manner in which the institutions of the EU could become more accountable to the people who paid for them, the studied response of the European political elite was to instruct Ireland to vote again, and this time deliver the right answer. With remarkably little dissent we duly returned to the polling booths and changed our minds.

Nice was saved and then, when the constitutional negotiations looked like they would never be resolved, Bertie Ahern, the taoiseach, used his powers of persuasion to hammer out a compromise that was acceptable to all 25 governments of the newly enlarged EU. It was, at the time, heralded as a great triumph for Ahern; Ireland’s presidency of the EU had been a tremendous success and we could be immensely proud of our government and our taoiseach.

One year later and reality bites: Ahern may be a good negotiator, but the constitution was always doomed if it could not be sold to the people of Europe as a sensible, simple and comprehensible. It is far from that. The constitution is verbose, often impenetrable to all but a legally trained mind, and open to different interpretations.

It is feared by the political left as a document that will unleash the ravages of American capitalism on social democratic France, and by the right as a document that will so entrench workers’ rights that Europe’s economies will atrophy.

Above all, though, it is a document that few Europeans will actually read, even if they are determined to. And therein lies its central problem: a constitution, whose supporters claim will bring the institutions of Europe closer to its people, will forever be distant, unloved and largely unread. So much so that one begins to doubt the bona fides of those who make the claims.

Writing in The Irish Times last week, Bertie Ahern said that Europe’s citizens “do not need more debate about the future construction of Europe, they need strong action to address pressing economic and social concerns”.

Unfortunately for Ahern and his fellow prime ministers, the people of Europe do not agree. The French and the Dutch, no matter how they vote, are saying loud and clear that there is still room for vigorous debate about how Europe should be constructed. They will be followed vociferously by the Danes and the British. In Ireland, the debate on Europe could be equally heated — though here, because the No campaign will be subverted by Sinn Fein, many opponents of the constitution will choose silence over forced association.

That debate, however, should not happen in the context of a referendum on this constitution. By the end of the week it will be dead in the water, and there is no point in continuing with a ratification process that will have been rendered meaningless by the Dutch and the French.

The European commission disagrees: bizarrely, Margot Wallstrom, the communications commissioner, said last week “the voice of nearly 50% of the European Union cannot be ignored”, while her spokesman Mikolaj Dowgielewicz said the commission might “insist” on the ratification process continuing in the remaining 14 countries that have yet to decide.

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