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http://service.spiegel.de/cache/int...,357433,00.html
France Is Self Destructing Prior to EU Constitution Vote
By Romain Leick in Paris
All eyes in Europe are now on France as the country prepares to vote on the EU constitution. The political wrangling is reaching a fever pitch as each side accuses the other of populism and treason. But why, exactly, are the French so skeptical of the treaty?
Just days before the EU constitution vote in France, surveys indicate the No camp is in the lead.
The boxing match is entering the final round -- and the gloves are coming off. Now, at this late date, anything goes and the rules of political decency have long since been discarded. One week before the French referendum over the European constitutional treaty, opponents and supporters are at each other's throats, almost as if the fate of Europe and the Republic were up for decision. The rest of the European Union can't help but ogle at the tug-o-war in morbid fascination.
Opponents, like parliamentarian Henri Emmanuelli -- a former president of the French parliament, current leader of the Socialist Party, and an angry spokesman for the left wing -- have likened a Yes vote to the shameful poll that put aging Marshall Philippe Pétain into power after France's defeat at the hands of the Germans in 1940. In other words, voting Yes is tantamount to treason. Supporters of the constitution on the other hand -- most prominently President Jacques Chirac -- see a No vote as a stab in the nation's back. In other words, voting No is a cowardly attack preventing the nation from future greatness.
Judging by the rhetoric in fact, an outside observer could be forgiven for thinking that everyone in France is a liar and a traitor.
But the bitter dispute in France over the pros and cons of the planned EU constitution has extended far beyond the nation's borders. What began months ago as a domestic political power struggle across party lines, has developed into a pan-European campaign. Last Wednesday, prominent members of the European left came together at Paris' Cirque d'Hiver to meet with their French comrades.
"A No vote is destructive," said Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn. Josep Borrell, the Spanish President of the European Parliament, implored his comrades not to "give your government a kick by kicking Europe in the ass." Other European politicians, including German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, have also urged French voters to approve the EU constitution.
An historic rift in Europe?
It's beginning to look as though the old continent is facing an historic break, just as it did in 1789. Are the French getting ready to export their revolutionary ideas, in a sudden outbreak of passion and violence, beyond their own borders? By voting No to the constitution, do they intend to deal a deathblow to the European Ancien Régime in Brussels, with its bureaucracy, its democratic shortcomings and its insatiable appetite for imposing regulations? And will the remaining Europeans be forced to join forces to oppose this danger, just as the Prussians, Austrians and English once joined forces against the Jacobins and murderers of kings in Paris?
French President Jacques Chirac has been pleading with his nation for a Yes vote.
While such a scenario may sound alarmist, for proponents of the constitution, the French have begun a rampage that could transform Europe into a political disaster zone next Sunday. But for opponents, today's descendants of French EU founders Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman are the only ones who have the courage to clearly express their concerns -- that the expanded EU is no longer a bulwark against globalization, largely perceived as a threat in France. Rather, it is actually accelerating globalization's progression.
French opinion-poll watching has become something of a favorite past time in Europe of late and the trend has reversed itself twice in recent months. In the week before the vote, the No camp is ahead of the Yes camp by 54 percent to 46 percent according to the most recent survey conducted by the Ifop agency for Paris Match magazine (no margin of error was given) -- and pro-European elites from across the political spectrum are in a panic.
Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, still recovering from gall bladder surgery and sporting an artificial tan to give the impression of good health, sounded almost hysterical when he predicted, at the sight of the supposed apocalypse, chaos and "long months of economic crisis." "A No vote," Raffarin said, "would expose France to attack from all sides."
But even some of his own cabinet ministers felt his argument somewhat self-serving. After all, France is already experiencing more than 10 percent unemployment, declining purchasing power, growing job insecurity, a lack of growth and confidence in the administration plunging to record lows.
Former Socialist Minister of Culture and Education Jack Lang, one of the most eloquent proponents of a Yes vote on the left, brusquely called upon Raffarin to keep his mouth shut: "You should go into hiding. Let's be honest, every time you make an appearance we lose two percentage points."
French socialists experiencing a meltdown
But the Socialists are having difficulties exorcizing their own political demons. A century after its founding by the great internationalist, Jean Jaurès, the party has embarked on a suicidal course. The controversy over the EU constitution threatens to turn into a fatal schism. The party leadership surrounding First Secretary François Hollande is enmeshed in a life-or-death power struggle with the dissidents, whose most intelligent spokesman has been former prime minister and finance minister Laurent Fabius.
In the process, domestic politics and European politics have become so hopelessly intertwined that rational debate now seems virtually impossible. Populists and demagogues haven't shied away from even the most viciously disparaging rhetoric, as both sides stir up fears by grossly exaggerating and dangerously simplifying the issues.
Most concerning for many on the left, the draft constitution declares right near the top that the Union's goal is to be "a domestic market with free and unadulterated competition." The word competition appears more than forty times in the constitution. For Fabius and his supporters, this stance -- casting economic liberalism in stone as a supreme principle -- would deal a deadly blow to left-wing policies in Europe. On the other hand, the constitution also defines "social security and social support" as a fundamental right of citizens.
To proponents of a Yes vote, this serves as clear evidence of the constitution's ideological neutrality. They like to list how many buzzwords important to modern enlightenment the constitution contains: human dignity, freedom, democracy, the constitutional state, tolerance, justice, solidarity, non-discrimination, gender equality, a high level of employment and steady growth.
Opponents counter that this is all nothing but a smokescreen -- that the constitution's noble objectives are non-binding and, if it comes to it, will take a back seat to the small print, namely that establishing the supreme importance of free competition. But one thing they overlook is that Europe began just under 50 years ago as an economic community, not a political union. The free movement of people, goods and capital was already established as a stated goal and fundamental value in the 1957 Treaties of Rome. The fathers of the constitution, guided by former French President Giscard d'Estaing, couldn't exact rewrite European history without sparking controversy. The result of their efforts is a compromise -- and one that must make allowances for the idiosyncrasies and traditions of 25 members -- and not a uniform economic and social model for all.
Contradictions, but also national differences in perception and assessment, make it difficult to take an unbiased view of an opus that is complex, confusing and, with its 448 articles, far too long. For example, the constitution guarantees the right to strike, but also paves the way for lockouts -- not a big deal for Germans, but an enormous provocation for the strike-prone labor unions in France, where lockouts are still illegal.
The German parliament approved the constitution earlier this month in a landslide.
The constitution strengthens the European Parliament's right to participate in the Brussels legislative process, but denies it the right to initiate legislation nor can it exercise any control over the European Council. It calls for the possibility of "heightened cooperation," giving some members the chance to move forward more quickly than others. But it also sets higher barriers: At least a third of EU states must be participants in such an acceleration and the European Commission, Council and Parliament must approve. The German-French economic engine, easily capable of spurring growth in a smaller Europe, could just as easily be shut out in a larger EU consisting of 25 or, at some future date, perhaps even 30 members. Paris and Berlin would no longer automatically be able to find a sufficient number of allies to form a solid core within the EU. "The opportunity to move forward with the Germans along the road of democratic integration no longer exists," complains Socialist Senator Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
A runaway bestseller
The text of the constitution, more than 200 pages long and by necessity a balancing act of political juggling, has become a bestseller in France, with book stores selling copies of the document by the hundreds of thousands. In addition, the government has mailed a pamphlet containing the draft copy and directions for participating in the referendum to everyone entitled to vote. But few are likely to be intimately familiar with the constitution. Uncertainty and lack of knowledge are turning the referendum into a risky venture -- and into a "propaganda vehicle," as Fabius now admits. He says that he has "never experienced such a strong movement of intellectual intimidation" as in this current debate.
In some cases, the referendum is even splitting families, like the Mitterands. The former president's widow plans to vote No, while one of his sons will check the box marked Yes. At times, the feud among Socialists is even taking on some of the characteristics of civil war, leading former Socialist Minister of Finance Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a staunch supporter of Yes, to warn against a "night of long knives" -- a reference to Adolf Hitler's violent settling of scores with his political enemies in 1934.
But even such ominous warnings have done nothing to prevent most party members from whipping up the public mood. Former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, attending a mass rally for the first time since his spectacular election defeat three years ago, accused opponents of the constitution within his party's own ranks of "demagoguery, excessiveness and fraud." The leaders of the No camp, who have warned against corporate flight to the EU's recently acquired members in Eastern Europe, have branded Jospin's henchman, Jack Lang, as an "administrator of nationalism, xenophobia and the extreme right." And former delegate to the EU Parliament Olivier Duhamel, himself a member of the constitutional convention, even sees France "on the road to Bolshevist regression. The word 'liberal' has become pornographic," he complains.
The new constitution and an enlarged Europe could mean an end to German-French dominance of the club. Here, European cheerleaders Helmut Kohl and Francois Mitterand.
President Chirac, who high-handedly launched the referendum movement to boost his stature as a great European statesman, now fears a catastrophe: for Europe, for France and for himself. Under the current circumstances, even a victory for Yes would only be a small triumph. But a victory for No would be a tremendous setback, says Chirac's chief rival -- but constitution supporter -- Nicolas Sarkozy.
At the summit meeting of the so-called Weimar Triangle -- made up of Chirac, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski -- in the northern French city of Nancy last Thursday, Chirac was practically pleading with the French people to approve the constitution, noting that a French rejection would not be followed by any new rounds of negotiations: "With whom should we negotiate? And over what?" he asked plaintively.
No re-negotiation possible
Schroeder loyally echoed Chirac's words. It would be an illusion, said the German chancellor, to believe in the possibility of subsequent improvement of the constitution. He is probably right, and German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer agrees, saying that "a second chance" is probably not in the cards.
But a No vote, on the other hand, would also not plunge Europe into an institutional vacuum. As it has done in the past, the EU would have to continue to make do with the treaty negotiated in Nice in December 2000, and perhaps revisit the issue of a constitution at some point in the future. It would be a less social, less democratic, weaker and more ponderous Europe, and France's and Germany's votes in the European Council would carry less weight than called for under the new constitution.
But German Foreign Minister Fischer, who visited France a number of times to campaign for the constitution, says philosophically that "the world will not go under." Daniel Cohn-Bendit scolded his leftist and Green Party friends who are succumbing to the temptations of No, saying that France should finally stop "dreaming that it can rule Europe." His comments were rewarded with a barrage of eggs and tomatoes in Montpelier, and he was drowned out by protestors brandishing megaphones at the Sorbonne in Paris. "Liar! We no longer want to listen to you!," shouted his disappointed fans, facing the bitter realization that "Dany le Rouge," the legendary figure of May 1968, has become an upstanding European liberal, now well-integrated into the institutions against which he once planned to lead protest marches.
"They see me as a traitor," says Cohn-Bendit, "but I don't make a drama out of it." As Cohn-Bendit well knows, the worst possible thing for the romantic left is to make peace with reality. In 1965, the great Charles de Gaulle was still able to hold Europe hostage with his policy of the "empty chair." All he had to do was boycott meetings in Brussels to preserve France's vital interests. But those days are long gone. De Gaulle's wannabe successor, Chirac -- while exhibiting a certain aplomb -- occasionally seems to be moving around the European stage like a master hovering on the brink of absurdity.
From agriculture policy to the euro to the appealing dream of a European superpower ("Europe-Puissance"), all major initiatives have always come from Paris. For France, Europe became the foundation of a greatness it has long since lost. Now, the planned EU constitution recognizes the goal of a common security and defense policy, but only if it is compatible with NATO's requirements. This concession, indispensable for almost all other members, consigns France's vision of a Europe on par with America to the garbage heap of symbolism. Seen in this light, the constitution represents a step in the direction of progress and emancipation for most EU states, but for many Frenchmen a step backwards into the banality of a perfectly ordinary nation. The question is whether, in a narcissistic flight of fancy, the French will once again revolt in the face of this painful realization. It is, however, a no-win situation.
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