French President Jacques Chirac took to the airwaves last week to make what he clearly felt was a strong case for a “yes” vote on the European Union constitution — and from all accounts failed.
Time Magazine writes:
French President Jacques Chirac sent TV ratings soaring last week during his appearance championing the yes vote for France’s May 29 referendum on the European Union constitution. But he won few accolades for his performance…Despite Chirac’s often impassioned arguments, a poll taken the next day found he hadn’t convinced 60% of respondents, nor eroded the no lead of 56%….The President’s best line: his booming “Non!” when asked if he would resign if the yes campaign was defeated.
England’s Times mercilessly banned the performance and its impact:
His entry into the “yes� campaign for the referendum on the European Union constitution was meant to have been a triumphant affair, a demonstration of his legendary powers of persuasion.
Instead, it has backfired. Two polls published yesterday after Chirac’s television encounter with 83 young adults gave the “no� vote a 12-point lead, the highest level yet recorded. In both surveys — for Paris-Match magazine and Le Parisien — 56% of respondents pledged to vote against the constitution and only 44% in favour.
The results intensified talk of la fin du régime and of how out of touch the president is with his people.
They also emphasized how irreverent the French have become since their forelock-tugging days under François Mitterrand, the late Socialist leader, who was secretly pleased about being referred to by his subordinates as “dieu�.
A rambling, repetitive Chirac faced the indignity on Thursday night of being repeatedly interrupted, not just by the cheeky young television presenters but also by the carefully vetted members of the audience.
How serious is this? Quite. Time Magazine notes that there are some French analysts who say it may take a while for the French President’s words to sink in and for the public to agree with them. That may not be quick enough for what Chirac — and the EU — wants…and needs.
And a politician’s domestic and international clout is not enhanced by people over time accepting their arguments but by how people immediately respond.
The situation is a bit ironic. The New York Times notes that France has historically championed the idea of a more united Europe:
France, after all, was a founding member of the six-country European Coal and Steel Community, which was the precursor to today’s 25-country European Union.But in a brutal shock to the European experiment, 11 opinion polls in France in the last month have indicated that the French are poised to vote “no” in the national referendum on May 29 on the first constitution in the union’s history.
The margins may be small, but each poll has been a dagger in the heart of the French political elite.
Every member state must ratify the constitution, and if a member with the grandeur and gravitas of France votes “no,” the document will be doomed.
So with few exceptions, French politicians on both the right and the left have predicted dire consequences for both France and Europe if that happens.
“We would likely be completely isolated,” President Jacques Chirac said last month.
Rejection of the constitution would threaten France’s ability to protect its national interests; nothing less than “peace, stability, democracy, human rights and economic development and social progress in the world of tomorrow” are at stake, he added.
Where is some of the key resistance in France? According to England’s Telegraph: among French farmers.
The generously subsidised French farming community, for years the bête noire of British Eurosceptics, is now at the vanguard of France’s own Europhobe coalition. Together, the two groups seem set on forming one of the most uncomfortable cross-Channel alliances since Charles de Gaulle fled into the arms of Winston Churchill in 1940. Their common enemy is not Nazi Germany but what Frenchmen such as Mr Rognault have come to regard as the domineering attitude of the EU.
France’s farmers represent a small, if influential, element of France’s Eurosceptic alliance that spans the political spectrum.
At its core is a rump of the French electorate which suspects that a European bureaucracy once controlled by Paris is beginning to lord it over the nation state that helped to set it up.
In 13 consecutive opinion polls during the past month, French voters have said that they are planning to vote Non in the referendum on May 29. That outcome would, in effect, destroy the treaty and leave the enlarged EU to struggle on with its existing system of decision-making.
“The French have realized that it is Brussels that governs France, not Paris,” said Francis Choisel, the president of the Alliance for French Sovereignty.
There is an interesting parallel to this kind of backlash. If the Telegraph piece is true, it’s a bit akin to the backlash seen in the United States among many conservatives over the United Nations. They perceive the UN as at onetime being more on the U.S. wavelength but now believe it is firmly under the control of nations that oppose the U.S. on many matters of importance to them. Some on the far right even want the U.S. to pull out of the UN.
This may not be the perfect analogy — but there are some similarities. And, if it is indeed true, that means tensions within France may accentuate over time.
Meanwhile, the Italian newspaper Corrieri Della Serra is not pleased by the sentiment in France. Here’s a small part of Gianni Riotta’s opinion piece, which should be read in full:
Unless the country’s mood shifts before May 29, France will reject the European constitution. The repercussions of that decision will shape history, blocking the process of European unification that began in 1945, and shrouding the euro in uncertainty. “The single currency is a political project,â€? predicted Germany’s foreign minister, Joschka Fischer. If the constitution is spurned in Paris, euros will continue to circulate, but they will lose their symbolic value, and their economic future will cloud over….
If, by a hair’s breadth, the constitution manages to elude the blade of the referendum guillotine, we must thank the French. But the very next day, we should be working to refine our interpretation of the constitution, and to launch a Europe where “social� is not synonymous with the conservatism of a stale, decadent, Ancien Régime.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.