It is time to shelve ideological polemics and view Europe as it really is. Distraught Europhiles and emboldened Eurosceptics miss the true meaning of the constitutional crisis triggered by the French and Dutch referendums. Far from demonstrating that the European Union is in decline or disarray, or in desperate need of democratic reform, the crisis demonstrates its fundamental stability and legitimacy.

In recent years, a European constitutional settlement has quietly emerged. The last decade of integration, with the single market, single currency and enlargement, was the Union's most successful. The mistake was to upset this pragmatic arrangement with an idealistic scheme for greater democratic deliberation and high-profile constitutional revision, which was then oversold to the European public. In rejecting the resulting document, reasonable though it is, French and Dutch voters may be wiser than they know.