A strange non sequitur arises (not for the first time) in a piece by Dirk van Heck, researcher for the European Foundation, an organisation whose innocuous name conceals a heavily Eurosceptic agenda.

Mr van Heck surveys the results of the French and Dutch referenda on the constitution, and attempts an analysis of what went wrong. He makes some valid points:

"The prevailing view in Britain is that France's current malaise owes much to its beiong part of the eurozone and that it has not undergone necessary free market economic reforms in the way that the UK has. In France, however, the prevailing view is that it is the advance of the Anglo-Saxon economic agenda at EU level that is undermining the French economy and ultimately French society."

But here's the non sequitur. Mr van Heck is keen to insist that voters were indeed objecting to the constitution itself, and not to other, more general worries about their governments, their economies, or the EU itself. Yet he then goes on to report:

"Many polls and countless interviews in the course of the campaigns helped to establish what was uppermost in voters' minds. French concerns included: the free market elements of the constitution; the prospect of Turkish entry to the EU; lack of influence in the EU, post-enlargement; and persistent low growth and high unemployment."

The problem is, only one of these four elements is even vaguely related to the constitution, namely its supposed "free market elements" - and, of course, these elements, such as they are, are identical to the existing treaties. So the conclusion demonstrated by Mr van Heck's own research is that the French did not oppose the constitution itself so much as aspects of their own domestic politics and EU policies.