 The rejection was a blow to the process of European integration, although the process continued.The result of the referendum, along with the ""petit oui"" in the French Maastricht referendum signaled the end of the "permissive consensus" on European integration which had existed in most of continental Europe until then.This was expressed by Pascal Lamy, chef de cabinet for Jacques Delors, the president of the European Commission, who remarked that, “Europe was built in a St. Simonian [i.e., technocratic] way from the beginning, this was Monnet’s approach