WorldView: When the history of the EU is written, two moments may well be seen as marking its biggest errors: the day someone had the idea to call the treaty consolidating its past treaties a "constitution", and the day 10 new members joined.
The use of the word "constitution" touched on the lie at the heart of the European project for decades: how the days of nation states are finished, how everyone is willing to allow a new state, Europe, to become the focus of their loyalty and identity.
In reality, while nation states as completely self-sufficient independent entities may no longer be viable, they retain a credibility that "Europe" could never match.
Go on to any street in the EU and ask people "Where are you from?", and the answer will be overwhelmingly the same. In Dublin, they'll say "I'm Irish". In Berlin, they'll say German. In Warsaw, Polish. Only a few will say European.
Nation states are transgenerational entities, uniting history, culture, and identity in a way the EU cannot hope to match. And that is where the problem lies.
For most people, their definition of themselves, if pro-Europe at all, is of being Irish in Europe, French in Europe, Italian in Europe. But the EU dream wanted to make people Europeans who live in Ireland, in France, in Germany.
The symbolism of an embryonic European state, as polls showed, was increasingly out of step with the feelings of ordinary people, for who their nation state embodied more than some distant "European Union" ever could. The stronger the treaties, the greater the opposition, with even previously Europhile countries like Ireland saying Níl to Nice.
While Europe's political elites, caught in the momentum of EU-building, rubberstamped treaties in their parliaments, polls showed that, for example, the Maastricht Treaty, if put to referendums Europe-wide, would have been thrown out. And majorities throughout European states opposed the euro at the start, with even today a majority in Germany wanting the deutschmark back.
Why? Because that note in their pocket was theirs; a product of their history and heritage. Which is one reason why Europhiles pushed the euro so hard. Because putting Europe in everyone's pocket was a symbolic way of saying: "We're all Europeans now, not mere Germans, French, Irish."
Voting against European treaties has become one of the few ways people have of saying "Oh, no, we're not". In that context, using the word "constitution" told everyone, implicitly, that this would be the most important document on the continent.
So people believed it meant downgrading their own constitutions. For those who gave their primary loyalty to their nation state and its symbols, the very idea of a European constitution was provocative and offensive.
For decades, even if the EU and its leaders ignored the fact, the bottom line was simple: force people to choose between Europe and their own nation state, and the latter would win every time. Using the word "constitution" seemed to set up that, for Europe, unwinnable battle.
Then there was the monumental mistake of taking in 10 members in one go. If there is one lesson learnt by everything from international institutions to ordinary families, it is that groups that rely on a human bond to hold them together as a unit are thrown into chaos if suddenly that group has a massive number of new members added overnight.
Existing members wonder how much they are going to lose out to the new people. The new people struggle to get fair treatment, to avoid either being pushed around or antagonising existing members of the group.
That is why, once it developed its own sense of unity and identity, the US was so cautious about adding states. They were let in in small groups to give all sides a chance to adjust, before more came in.
Yet Europe's leaders in one stroke added 10 on top of the existing 15. And so Europhile Holland suddenly found itself wondering: where does all this leave us now?
Germans were horrified at the idea of bringing in Turkey later. The British faced the loss of their rebate. France suddenly found itself going to lose influence in a far bigger, central and east European-orientated Europe.
A sudden, massive influx, with another massive queue standing outside waiting their turn, freaked millions of people, as it was guaranteed to. And it created a backlash that helped turn middle-ground people into Non voters, whose main message to politicians was: hold on a moment. This isn't the Europe we thought we belonged to.
So how can the union salvage the situation? Step one - bin the constitution immediately. The European Council this week went halfway there by putting it on hold. Yet some of the language used was still pure no-surrender: no renegotiation, no recognition that France and the Netherlands had effectively vetoed it, and according to polls Ireland and Denmark were likely to do the same.
Step two is more controversial. The union needs to slow down, to let the new members settle in, and the old members get used to them. So it must hang up the "closed" sign, and admit no new members for at least a decade, even then only bringing in new members in ones and twos.
Ultimately it must bin the myth of the death of the nation states and recognise that it is they, not it, that have legitimacy in people's eyes.
The death of the constitution sends a clear signal to devotees of the idea of a United States of Europe that that concept can never happen. The best they can hope for is a club of colleagues, defined by their own history and identity, with the nation state as the union's fundamental building blocks.
If it listens and learns, the constitution's defeat could be the beginning of a chapter in a very long book on the union. If it ignores the message, and still acts as if a No vote doesn't mean No it could well be the beginning of the last chapter of a far smaller book.