Services row threatens French EU vote

A row over economic reform has “poisoned” a looming French EU constitution vote as new polling puts ‘non’ campaigners in the lead.

As EU leaders prepare for a March 22 economic summit in Brussels the growing controversy is set to overshadow proceedings.

A poll published by the French daily Le Parisien on Friday puts opposition to the EU constitution in the lead for the first time – at 51 per cent.

The new figures will alarm the deeply unpopular French leader Jacques Chirac amid a serious row over EU moves to liberalise Europe’s service sector.

Elysée political fixers will also be concerned that with the CSA polling showing that less than half of French citizens are planning to cast ballots – low turnout often benefits protest votes.

French voters, long disillusioned by the Chirac administration, are angry over economic and labour reforms pushed through by his right-wing government.

And street demonstrations, including a national strike, have become linked with EU plans to shake-up Europe’s services fuelling French fears of a neo-liberal Brussels agenda for the welfare state.

European Commission President José Manual Barroso has expressed “amazement” at the heat of the debate.

“I have to tell you frankly that I am sometimes amazed by the French debate, with all due respect to French democracy. The debate is to a certain extent biased and skewed,” he said on Thursday.

During a debate with French parliamentarians and MEPs Barroso warned opponents of the services directive against “giving excuses to europhobes and eurosceptics”.

“I would ask national politicians not to get involved in demagoguery,” he said.

Barroso’s deputy and the EU’s economic growth czar Gunter Verheugen warned that the French EU debate was becoming hostage to a series of issues.

Turkish EU membership, opposed by many in France, and cheap textile imports from China had “poisoned” the well of domestic political debate, he told FT Europe.

“The political situation in France as far as Europe is concerned is poisoned,” he said.

“We have a situation where everything is in danger of being taken hostage by the French referendum: first Turkey, then the services directive and now textile exports from China.”

French Senator Roland Ries warned the commission on Thursday that the EU constitution could become a victim of Brussels driven economic reforms – the flagship of Barroso’s administration.

“In France and possibly elsewhere in Europe, there is currently a tendency for the services directive to be used as a scapegoat for those who want to argue against the European constitution,” he said.

The services proposals have triggered a bitter debate across the EU and unleashed fears that companies from countries, in ‘new’ Eastern Europe, with lower taxes and wages, will undercut public services and employees.

But, speaking on Friday, Barroso’s official spokesman downplayed the services row, the role of the commission, and the significance of French opinion polls.

“You are overestimating the power of the commission,” she said.

Brussels is arguing that domestic French political and economic difficulties are “crystallising around the services directive”

“It is inaccurate to say the only reason that opinion polls have fallen because of the services directive,” the Brussels spokesman said.

Former European Commission President Jacques Delors has given an apocalyptic vision of a French ‘non’ to the EU constitution.

“If ‘no’ prevails, France will be in for a political cataclysm,” he told Le Progres on Friday.

“In Europe, it will open a very serious crisis which will slow down European construction, to the disadvantage of France.”

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