By Bruno Waterfield - 18th February 2005
Paris may push for an early referendum as opinion polls show that French support for the EU constitution is ebbing.
President Jacques Chirac may consult the French political class to seek a May rather than June date.
A possible date discussed in Elysée corridors is May 22 amid fears that the European constitution is becoming linked in the minds of voters with an unpopular Brussels economic agenda and Turkey’s EU entry.
Original public opinion polls originally put support for EU constitution at two thirds.
But private surveys for the government have shown support falling to below 60 per cent.
Charles Pasqua, a former French interior minister and former leader of the UEN group in the European Parliament has argued that a rejection of the constitution would be a "salutary shock" for Europe.
“The European Constitution is not, as one would like to make them think, the pleasant jubilee of peace and the friendship between the European people.”
“It is on the contrary the founding act of the "New Europe" dear to Donald Rumsfeld, pledged to the financial markets, run in the Atlantic mould with which the accession of Turkey will make it coincide exactly, integrated de facto in the "new world order,” he wrote in Le Figaro.
“By rejecting the treaty instituting a constitution for Europe, the French will not turn their back on Europe… quite to the contrary, they will give the EU the salutary shock it has need of.”
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