It’s 10 years since France, in a shocker, voted down a proposed EU Constitution. The aftershocks can still be felt.

“As a Socialist, as a European, I am still wounded by the No in 2005,” wrote Pierre Moscovici, then a member of the European Parliament and now Commissioner for economic and financial affairs, on his blog last week.

On Sunday May 29, 2005, with a 69 percent turnout, 54.67 percent of French voters said “No” to the following question: “Do you approve the bill authorizing the ratification of the treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe?”

The referendum outcome was the first of two fatal blows to the European Constitutional Treaty drawn up, no less, than under the direction of former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. The second came a couple of days later when 61 percent of Dutch voters rejected the project.

In the wake of the French and Dutch votes, a constitutional project that promised a better, simpler and more democratic Europe fell apart. The EU turned in a different direction. The votes were seen as a rejection of the ambitious vision for a Europe led from Brussels, building an ever-tightening club of a growing number of states, perhaps one day even Turkey. National capitals took back the political initiative from Brussels and Euroskepticism planted deeper roots, a process further accelerated with onset of the Greek economic crisis half a decade later.

“It was a traumatic experience,” said Bruno Cautrès of the Centre for Political Research at Sciences Po.

The first European vote

At the turn of the century, the EU was on a winning streak. The euro was born and in 2004 the bloc took in 10 new members, including seven from the former Soviet bloc. But it was also unsure about its future and questions remained even among long-time members about how much “ever-closer Union” was too much.

In 2001, EU leaders set up a Convention on the Future of Europe and put Giscard in charge. That group — made up of MEPs, senior national politicians, and thinkers and eminences grises like former Belgian prime minister Jean-Luc Dehaene — took two years to write a new 482-page Constitution.

While many European countries considered the text in their national legislatures, 10 countries including France, the UK, Denmark, Poland and Spain, decided to hold national referendums.

“Unlike European elections, the referendum was a true European vote, not about the membership but about the content, the direction of the European project,” wrote Cautrès in a history of the debate.

Textbooks about the Treaty became best-sellers and there was something like a vigorous public discussion across Europe about the future of the EU.

“It was unbelievable to see all the debates, we truly desired to understand the Treaty,” recalled Karima Delli, a Green MEP who voted against the Treaty because the proposed text was too economically liberal.

In France, the Yes campaign was supposed to have an easy win, as polls initially suggested. The main political parties, non-governmental organizations and labor unions were all in favor.

Then, two months before the vote, the momentum shifted to the No camp, for good.

How did it happen? There were plenty of arguments feeding the No side, not all of them directly connected: to some voting No was a protest against the Chirac government; others said the text was too complicated; others blamed unemployment; others pointed to populist arguments against the possible EU membership of Turkey and the prospect of the famous “Polish plumbers” flooding the French labor market.

“Yes” supporter Joseph Daul, a French MEP and president of the European People’s Party (EPP), recalled that the EU was made into a scapegoat “for everything — including the size of French pensions.”

Cautrès underlined the role of voters on the French left, who had supported the Maastricht Treaty creating the European Union but opposed the Constitution, which they said would harm the French welfare state model.

“No” campaigners from the left “framed” the last crucial months of the campaign, Cautrès said, focusing their criticisms on a too-liberal Europe.

Aftermath Act I: Brussels moved on?

The day after the “No” vote, French Yes supporters tried to move on. “Most of my colleagues sympathized with us,” said Daul, speaking of fellow EPP members. “Now, the referendum does not have any consequences. Nobody ever talked to me about it.”

But in the Socialist Party the situation was more tense, with some who opposed the Constitution finding themselves isolated.

“I decided to go to Tallinn for a meeting with European Social Democrats, because I knew I would need to explain my positions to others,” said Pervenche Berès, a prominent Socialist MEP, who after abstaining from a vote on the final version of the Constitution in the Convention, decided to support the No side in the referendum. “But Martin Schul—z was truly angry and I was basically alone.”

After the French and Dutch rejections, most EU countries withdrew their referendum proposals (expect Luxembourg, which actually approved it) and the ratification process was frozen. A new text was considered but opponents of the treaty in France were unable to propose an alternative.

The proposal was stuck in limbo between countries that had already ratified the Treaty, countries that refused and countries such as the UK where the text had not even really been debated.

By January 2007, when Germany took over the presidency of the Council of Ministers, 18 countries had approved the European Constitution. By June of that year, EU leaders adopted the Lisbon Treaty, a soft version of the Constitution Treaty. The old voting rules and other institutional arrangements were too unwieldy to accommodate an EU of 27 members.

But approving that treaty required two separate Irish referendums, the second one called after the first one produced the wrong outcome — a no vote.

Aftermath Act II: France still lost in translation

France and the EU have both changed a lot in the 10 years since the No vote. Many of the main players from the French referendum drama have moved on: Jacques Chirac is long gone; so is José Manuel Barroso, who was then president of the Commission; and former French President Giscard has kept busy writing novels about his hypothetical affair with Lady Diana.

But the EU now finds itself confronting Brexit (with a UK referendum on EU membership) and Grexit (a possible result of the Greek financial crisis). Nobody is talking about a European Constitution. The EU has scaled back its ambitions. The focus is now on doing more with less and keeping itself together.

Ten years after the vote, French influence and “grandeur” in Brussels is seen as on the wane. Socialist François Hollande was elected in 2012 partly by promising to “redirect Europe,” but even members of his party complained when MPs voted for the 2012 Eurozone treaty on stability, coordination and governance. The treaty was adopted but mistrust of both Hollande and a liberal Europe was revived, as if the 2005 referendum had only just happened.

“We saw the same debates and divisions of the 2005 European Constitution debate.” said Cautrès.

The last upheaval for France’s relationship with the EU was last year, when the far-right National Front (FN) party took first place in the country’s elections to the European Parliament. That stunning outcome reflected the same frustrations with “Europe” as in 2005.

All the main parties in France are careful now about how they discuss the EU, if at all. But the FN has a clear and coherent approach, making sure to remind voters of the failed referendum at every every opportunity.