By Updated Thursday September 9 Bruno Waterfield - 7th September 2004
A French ‘non’ to the EU constitution may be a step closer if the country’s former prime minister Laurent Fabius calls for centre-left opposition in a 2005 referendum.
In a Thursday television interview the Socialist ‘Number Two’ Fabius will make a key pronouncement on the issue as debate between the French centre-left leadership and party activists is stepped up.
“Is it yes or no then? Or is it still neither yes or no? ‘Yes provided that…’ or ‘No, except if…’,” wonders Liberation.
French socialists are debating a future national referendum on an EU constitution and two French MEPs are campaigning for a ‘non’ vote.
Andre Laignel and Marie Noëlle Lienemann are supporting ‘Ambition Europe’, a campaign urging French socialist colleagues to oppose the constitution.
The Paris decision to allow a vote in the second half of 2005 could be a high risk option for French leader Jacques Chirac.
Elysée political fixers fear that a poll may be dominated by a protest vote at Chirac’s unpopular centre-right government.
If the French centre-left Socialist opposition back a ‘non’ vote, defeat could be a foregone conclusion – a development that would see Paris have to re-negotiate the constitution.
Left-wing critics claim that the EU constitution is pro-free market, pro-globalisation and a setback for ‘social Europe’.
French Socialists began debate last month over whether to oppose Chirac in a constitution referendum.
Left-wingers are arguing that the current text gives too much free market clout to Europe’s bosses and too little for Europe’s workers.
French socialists are split on the issue: one camp argues that the deal is the best possible and opposition will damage the EU – a stance backed by the centre-left’s leader Francois Hollande.
But others – including the two French MEPs – back an opposition campaign to ensure the EU stays on a social rather than free-market track.
Laignel and Lienemann note that the existing Nice EU Treaty was negotiated by a French socialist government at a time when 13 of 15 EU capitals were centre-left.
“To vote for a constitution which will engage us durably, a question deserves to be put: does one have to vote yes at any cost, with the only essential reason to advance?” the MEPs ask in a web manifesto.
“After 50 years of European construction, we think that the essence is rather of knowing from now on where one wishes to go.”
The European Parliament deputies dismiss claims by ‘yes’ campaigners that a ‘no’ would throw the EU into chaos – the constitution must be ratified by all Europe’s 25 members.
Laignel and Lienemann suggest that if the EU constitution is a simple technical treaty a French ‘non’ is no problem.
But, they argue, if the text is a true constitution for the future of Europe it is worth the struggle to get it right.
“It is said to us that it is necessary to vote ‘yes’ because this text is only a kind of rules of procedure, which deserves neither excess of praise nor excess of criticism,” the pair note.
“It is paradoxical that those who minimise the range of this text are also those which maximise the consequences of a negative vote of the Socialists or of France!"
"Why would chaos and the apocalypse come from non-ratification of simple rules of procedure?”
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