The civic response in the EU lead countries like France, Belgium and Germany to the necessity of removing failed socialist policies is sometimes striking. And what is probably a historical irony is that these socialists are about to vote down a EU constitution that would enshrine socialism into the EU for generations to come.

But when you hear what is happening on the ground, it is obviously a good thing old Europe get’s a bit of a shake up sooner rather than later.

[hat tip Charles Johnson @ Little Green Footballs]

No chaos on the horizon? No backlash from the disgruntled, in a country where trade unions call a general strike because the government dares to rob them of a holiday—the Monday after Pentecost Sunday—in an admittedly clumsy plan to allocate the value of one day’s labor to help the aged and handicapped and prevent a remake of the 15,000 dead in the 2003 heat wave. An airport ground crew union went on strike after an employee was temporarily suspended while under investigation for pulling the mobile stairs away from a plane without respecting the safety rules, causing a stewardess to fall to her death. A few days ago, armed and enraged oyster farmers rammed into a police boat and tried to capsize it. They were protesting against a decree blocking the sale of their oysters because they are contaminated by toxic algae. And the winegrowers who tear up the town because of a drop in sales? Are the serial strikers going to swallow a vote that they interpret as a vicious triumph of ultraliberalism?

But the Socialist Party poster holds out its rose logo and invites voters to say OUI for a “social Europe.” Meaning a social democratic welfare state Europe, an economic paradise where everything is paid for and no one pays. A Europe in which Polish plumbers won’t be able to undercut their French comrades and Czech programmers will be stopped at the nonexistent border.

Read the whole thing.