By Bruno Waterfield - 22nd June 2006
Ségolène Royal, a favourite contender to replace French President Jacques Chirac in elections next year, has called for the EU constitution to be ditched.
Royal is the opinion polls favourite to head the French socialist presidential ticket in April 2007.
In an interview with Le Monde, she calls for a new EU treaty to replace the European constitution – sunk by French voters last year.
The politician – whose centrism is often compared to the anti-left wing iconoclasm of UK leader Tony Blair – is pushing for a EU social contract.
“We need a new treaty, and above all a social treaty. Europe today has just one economical leg. Without the second, social leg, nothing is possible,” she said.
Her stress on showing Europe can deliver the goods, rather than haggling over institutional arrangements, will play well in Brussels and EU capitals such as London.
Royal, should she run for and win Chirac's job, could be in charge of brokering a new EU treaty in the last half of 2008 under a French EU presidency.
“We will advance only if Europe proves its capacity to protect, to roll back mass unemployment, to represent a better future,” she said.
"More than technical rules, we need true political goodwill with which to build what I call a Europe of results.”
Royal took a crack at French interior minister, and her possible presidential rival, Nicolas Sarkozy's idea to base the EU on a core Europe of the six biggest member states.
She argues that idea would anger smaller countries and compound Chirac’s alienation of new EU members.
“I am wary of the domination of all by a minority,” she said.
This is raised a lot by smaller countries. Look at the damage caused by Jacques Chirac in the Eastern European countries…”
Chirac attacked new, then incoming, EU countries for not knowing their place and being pro-US as European capitals split over Iraq in 2003.
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