They've put the constitution on ice and have switched attention to the budget battle. 46% of the budget goes to the Common Agricultural Policy and rural development and the poor impoverished French farmer gets the lions share. Next time you eat your croissants remember how much it's really costing you.

The enviable quality of life in France comes at our expense. Without farm subsidies, the network of underwear shops and florists in every village would have to shut down and the quality of life would plummet in a world of frumpy french women (you don't get many chances in your life to say that). But seriously though, Chirac is right to be preoccupied and depressed these days. The French have been living beyond their means for years and their social model, enviable as it is, is unsustainable. Propped up by borrowing and EU subsidies, heir economic situation defies conventional logic.

Central to the French lifestyle is lunch (and not working on Mondays). Our tiny, sleepy village couldn't sustain a local shop but we had a kicking restaurant which was packed to the rafters every lunch time (12.30pm is the time to invade France - you'd be in the Elysee before desert). The car park was always full of France Telecom vans and on Fridays the Gendarmes from the nearby town used to drop by, uniformed and armed, enjoying a noisy, jovial lunch lubricated by an aperitif, du vin and maybe just a small digestif. Almost everybody paid with lunch vouchers. A few years ago France Telecom announced an annual loss of almost 100 million euros, almost exactly the value paid in employee lunch vouchers for the period.

The government bailed France Telecom out that time (again), while Orange, its mobile arm, and Wanadoo, its internet arm, went from strength to strength. Their coffers were not raided to support the parent operation. France has a poor record on propping up state companies in defiance of European policy to open up markets and competition. Until now this approach has worked and they have taken what they want out while blithely ignoring many of its policies and rules.

A number of european cheesemakers transformed Irish cheesemaking in the 1980s and 1990s, producing a fabulous array of quality farmhouse cheese. Despite an established market, some of them were driven out of business because of an EU rule that banned production of non-pasteurised cheese. Walk through any market in France and you will observe another rule ignored. And the way they store their oysters in the supermarkets, in wooden boxes, unrefrigerated - can you imagine that in the M&S food hall - there must be a rule against it!

The English are guilty of double-thinking on the EU - never quite committing, ever suspicious. The French, on the other hand, talk the talk but pick and choose which bits to implement - until recently when the resounding non to the constitution put screeching breaks on the great project.

Great is an example of why non-English speakers don't like us - it's got one of those awkward spellings and has multiple meanings. In this context great means enormous but not necessarily any good. In fact, the the more enormous it gets, the less good. Old Europe imploded in the first half of the twentieth century. Crippled by war and death, new Europe emerged with a great (good) federal dream of reconstruction, based on consensus and broad European participation.

We've come a long way since then. Welfare states have been built and torn asunder in the time, Ireland got rich, they covered Spain in plastic and concrete and Europe got bigger and bigger. The territory is enlarging and the agenda has broadened. The faceless European commission has shaped the dream into a great (not) bureaucracy that churns out rules faster than they can be translated - so we have a great big paper mountain to add to our obscenities. And they give key jobs to nasty political has-beens instead of injecting a little bit of dynamism and idealism into the debate with some young blood.

They have been holding us to ransom for years. Over the years, they have enlarged their remit and the territory based on the same message to the citizens - support it or the great EU experiment will die - a gun at your throat in the ballot box. Most europeans don't want the death of Europe, but it's time to take stock and revisit the dream.

Most computer users use only 10% of the features of a software application and the remaining 90% of functionality is utilised by power-users only. I would like a europe like this - give us the 10% and take the power-user stuff away - I don't need it and I don't want to pay for it. We have the communication tools to open up a real-time open discourse across Europe that engages all the citizens, not just the dinosaurs in Strasbourg. We need to think very carefully about the implications of territorial enlargement on our political and military structures, as we encroach on other spheres of political influence in Russia and in the Middle East. Strength in numbers is all very well, but not to the point where you get up the nose of the neighbours. Europe shines in many areas, culture, human rights, environmental goals, free trade, freedom of movement . . .

There are many models of federalism where we can find inspiration - how they manage languages is interesting. Switzerland has four cantons and four official languages and seems impervious to the pull of Europe. Canada has ten states and two official languages. They have had their ups and downs and the french separatist movement never quite goes away. But they have withstood the pull of their mighty southern neighbour and have a well-respected and distinct identity in the world. The USA has one language and has the most centralised legislative powers of these models.

There has never been a federal experiment that includes the number of languages Europe now speaks. Language is at the heart of how we think, the key to our cultural psyche. I have no idea how many languages we speak these days, but understanding each other is an enormous complex challenge - of Babel proportions. If you get the communication flow right it will be possible to strip the structures right back, driving decision-making back to national level and minimising central legislation and institutions. We want stability, wealth and opportunity, freedom of trade and of movement. We don't need the rules about what's a sausage.