PARIS (AP) - French voters rejected the European Union's first constitution Sunday, a stinging repudiation of President Jacques Chirac's leadership and the ambitious, decades-long effort to further unite the continent.
Chirac, who had urged voters to approve the charter, announced the result in a brief, televised address. He said the process of ratifying the treaty would continue in other EU countries.
"It is your sovereign decision, and I take note," Chirac said. "Make no mistake, France's decision inevitably creates a difficult context for the defense of our interests in Europe."
With nearly 96 percent of votes counted, "no" had 55.5 percent, with only 44.5 percent for "yes," the Interior Ministry said.
The treaty's rejection in a bitterly contested referendum in France _ the architect of the European project _ could set the continent's plans back by years and amounts to a personal humiliation for the veteran French leader.
Although Chirac argued that the constitution would streamline EU decision-making and make the bloc more accessible to its 450 million citizens, opponents feared it would strip France of its sovereignty and generous social system and trigger an influx of cheap labor.
"I think that the constitution will destroy our political structure. It's just about economic interests," said Anne Le Moel, a "no" voter and 42-year-old professor of philosophy, repeating what had become a battle cry among the charter's opponents.
All 25 EU members must ratify the text for it to take effect as planned by Nov. 1, 2006. Nine already have done so: Austria, Hungary, Italy, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain.
Treaty opponents chanting "We won!" gathered at Paris' Place de la Bastille, a symbol of rebellion where angry crowds in 1789 stormed the prison and sparked the French Revolution. Cars blared their horns and "no" campaigners thrust their arms into the air.
"This is a great victory," said Fabrice Savel, 38, from the working-class suburb of Aubervilliers. He was distributing posters that read: "No to a free-market Europe."
EU leaders in Brussels, Belgium, vowed to continue their effort to have the constitution approved.
"I am not a doctor, but the treaty is not dead," said Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency. "This ratification process will continue."
The Dutch vote Wednesday, with polls showing opposition to the constitution there running at about 60 percent. On Friday, the constitution's main architect, former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, said countries that reject the treaty will be asked to vote again.
France was the first "no" _ even though it was a founder member of what over 50 years has grown into the EU.
"There is no more constitution," said Philippe de Villiers, a leading opponent. "It is necessary to reconstruct Europe on other foundations that don't currently exist."
De Villiers called on Chirac to resign _ something the French leader had said he would not do _ and called for parliament to be dissolved.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, the extreme-right leader who campaigned vigorously for the constitution's defeat, also called for Chirac's resignation.
Chirac "wanted to gamble ... and he has lost," Le Pen said.
The French vote came three days before the charter faces another hostile reception in the Netherlands.
Chirac and European leaders have said there was no fallback plan in the event of a French rejection. But many French voters did not believe that. Many, especially on the left, hoped their "no" vote would force the EU back to the drawing board and improve the 448-clause document. In the meantime, "no" voters expected the EU to continue functioning under existing treaties.
"I voted 'no' because the text is very difficult to understand. Also, I'm afraid for democracy. The way the EU functions is very opaque. Many people there are not directly elected," said Emmanuel Zelez, 32, a film editor.
The outcome caused immediate disarray, with political leaders outside France divided on the significance of the French vote.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said "the result raises profound questions for all of us about the future direction of Europe."
But the European Union's industry commissioner, Guenther Verheugen, said the vote was not a catastrophe and that the situation should not be over dramatized, but he acknowledged that things did not look good for the vote on the charter in the Netherlands on Wednesday.
"It would be a very bitter experience if two founding members of the union, who had always pushed for it, were to vote 'no,'" he said.
Chirac had waged an all-out campaign to persuade nearly 42 million sharply divided voters to approve the charter. But the electorate was in rebellious mood, with unemployment running at 10 percent and wide unease about immigration, Eurocrats and free-market capitalism.
Turnout was close to 70 percent _ testifying to the passions that the treaty and the debate surrounding it aroused.
Nicolas Sarkozy, the head of Chirac's ruling Union for a Popular Movement and a leading campaigner for the "yes" camp, called Sunday's defeat "a major political event."
Looking ahead to France's next general elections in 2007, Sarkozy said: "We must decide on an innovative, courageous and ambitious plan of action."
Chirac's popularity ratings have plummeted in recent weeks, and in his television address, the president said he would announce "my decisions concerning the government and its priorities" in coming days.
Nine nations _ Austria, Hungary, Italy, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain _ already have ratified the constitution.
A "yes," coupled with another by the Dutch, could have given the constitution potentially unstoppable momentum.
In the end, though, the French _ torn between wanting to remain one of the engines of an increasingly competitive Europe yet fiercely protective of the generous social welfare benefits they enjoy _ stuck with their perceptions that the charter posed another threat to their cherished way of life.
"If you look at every sentence, every turn of phrase, practically every article has a mention of (financial) markets," Anne-Marie Latremoliere, a 57-year-old graphic designer, said after casting a "no" ballot at a polling station near the Bastille.
"We want Europe to be a beautiful place," she said, "and this is certainly not it."
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
It was indeed, in the end, a new 1789. But this time, instead of royal heads rolling in revolutionary fervor, the French masses guillotined globalization, deregulation, free markets, Thatcherism imported via Brussels, Polish plumbers, Turkish taxi drivers, the French president, the French government, the political elites, the media - indeed, amid all the carnage in this republican soft revolution, the Europe Union (EU) was no more than collateral damage. To top it all, in this massive ideological debate, voting "non" was supposed to be pro-Europe: not this one under construction, but "another" Europe.
Who profits from this political tsunami - the "mother of Europe" rejecting the proposed European constitution? The constitution was supposed to lead the EU towards more democratic practices, more efficiency and more power to face global competition. With the Dutch electorate all set on Wednesday to complete a one-two punch, one might assume the document, a compromise reached after five years of hard-fought negotiation, is already six feet under.
The EU's disarray is caviar for its global competitors - the US, China and India. (The euro fell to a seven-month low against the dollar on Tuesday, breaking below key $1.2450 levels.) In the US, from conservatives to neo-conservatives, from "grand chessboard" proponents to preemptive war cheerleaders, all in favor of divide and rule are delighted. Especially because the debacle was chiefly the fault of French President Jacques Chirac (aka "Europe's dinosaur"). As a careless political opportunist, Chirac never bothered to take the time to explain to French voters what the EU's future was all about. Thus he may have squandered the vision of the EU as a serious counterweight to the US - just when President George W Bush was learning how to pronounce the words "European Union".
A romantic reading of this event would reveal the French as gallant warriors showing "another EU is possible" to 450 million fellow Europeans. More realistically, as a newspaper from Alsace put it, "For a long time, the EU will be reduced to a free market zone, to the great satisfaction of the US, the UK and the new members from Eastern Europe." Not to mention Iran, now facing the EU-3 (Germany, France and Britain) nuclear negotiations conducted by a French-fried Chirac, a Gerhard Schroeder fighting for his political life and an embattled Tony Blair. There was a time, in the late 1990s, when Blair could look himself in the mirror as the model leader for the future EU. Not after Iraq.
La vie en rose The French tsunami has been widely interpreted as a battle between the nation-state and globalization. It's not that simple. Many workers from China or India - not to mention the US - would give an arm and a leg to enjoy la vie en rose: only 35 hours of work every week, six weeks of holidays every year, strong unions which call a nationwide strike at a minute's notice, a fabulous health system, abundant childcare, a very generous welfare system, subsidies for privileged sectors of the economy - not to mention that unlimited supply of sublime bottles of wine and 365 different types of cheese.
There's a price to pay for all this - other than high taxes: the French alternative translates into a 10% unemployment rate (25% among young people), slow economic growth, and a decline in purchasing power (largely because of the strong euro pushing up prices). But huge swathes essentially voted "non" because they can't conceive losing so many of their privileges. The bottom line is that the Anglo-Saxon "liberalizing" model is a bonanza for a very limited class of already wealthy, basically white, Western men, but not exactly adjusted to increase social justice around the world. Any other country in the same situation as France would also be largely inclined to be against a document that allegedly threatens their egalitarian social model.
Some statistics put it in perspective. According to a specially-developed French computer program, the word "bank" shows up 176 times in the constitution's text; "market" 78 times; "competition" 174 times; and "social progress" only three times. "Fraternity" - a concept embedded in the soul of France - is not even mentioned. The "non" vote reveals textbook class struggle: blue-collar workers (more than 80% "non") against pale bureaucrats in navy-blue suits ("oui'). Paris (66%) and other cosmopolitan cities - Lyon, Strasbourg (home of the European parliament), Marseilles, Toulouse (home of Airbus) - voted overwhelmingly "oui".
But the mass rejection also reveals an uneasy coalition of Stalinists, Trotskytes, neo-fascists, protectionist farmers and young anti-globalization activists. 52% of the nation stressed the current, troubled "economic and social situation" as the main reason for voting "non". This victory of the extremes - right and left alike - could not but leave people like former Socialist minister Jack Lang (a moderate) appalled. Lang said that the "great European project has to be led in France by the left, based on the PS [the French Socialist Party]. Now that base has exploded.
It ain't over until... On a pedestrian level, the 25-member EU can still walk, thanks to the universally-despised Treaty of Nice, approved in December 2000. Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, the current EU president, is already on full damage control mode: he pledged to do everything to keep the constitution on life support at the next, crucial Council of Ministers meeting in Brussels on June 16. Some more anarchic souls even consider the "non" as a blessing in disguise: "The euro will fall, relaunching the economy in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands", says an European Commission diplomat. Another one insists, "The crisis is in France. Not here in Brussels. We hit a stumbling block. But the political integration goes on."
In fact, the night of the long knives may last for months. If France has a lot of soul-searching to do in terms of economic modernization, Britain and Poland for their part cannot offer lessons in social justice. There's no easy path to reconciliation on the horizon. Blair - not to mention the Poles and the Danes - is already laying the groundwork to escape the responsibility of holding his own referendum. A "non" to the EU in France has nothing to do with a "no" in Britain" and not much with a "nee" in the Netherlands. But amid all the gloom, some EU diplomats are trying to put on the bravest of faces - insisting that one of the key attributes of the EU is good crisis management.
Feverish speculation aside, there is indeed a plan B in Brussels - as EU diplomats told Asia Times Online. It consists in assuring a maximum of "yes" supporters by November 2006: nine EU countries have already said so - including key members Spain (by referendum) and Germany (parliamentary decision). The most pressing problem is preventing Blair from calling off the British referendum. Thus by the end of next year, the EU may play out declaration 30 of the annex to the constitution, according to which if four-fifths have ratified or one or more members had found "difficulties" on the way, the matter goes to the European Council. So it's absolutely imperative that among the EU-25 there are no more than five "non" votes.
A "return of the living dead" scenario may be on the horizon. If three big countries vote "no" - France, Britain and Poland, for instance - the constitution is politically dead, but parts of it can be resurrected. The EU-25 just have to select the consensual parts and introduce them by agreement or by a one-page treaty signed by all parliaments. This means Europe proceeding at different speeds - but with one crucial change: the Franco-German couple may not be in the driving seat anymore.
So it's essentially back to square one: national governments having to solve the EU mess. There may be no constitution in 2006, but at least European leaders may reserve themselves the right - unanimously, of course - to adopt some provisions. This is the heart of plan B. They may also decide to appoint - for two-and-a-half years - a president of the European Council in charge of fast-forwarding political integration.
Juncker is a serious candidate. They may also appoint Javier Solana as the EU's minister of Foreign Affairs - the EU's global face, something that Solana already incarnates. They don't need a referendum for this, only an agreement between the European Council, the European Commission and the European parliament. And speaking of saving face, especially in this, the EU's darkest hour: at least when Bush or Chinese President Hu Jintao want to call the EU in 2006, all they have to do is dial Solana's number.
The Rise of French Pro-Sovereignty Movements and their Geopolitical Consequences
03 June 2005
After the rejection of the E.U. Constitutional Treaty in France and in the Netherlands, European elites are experiencing the worst crisis in the history of the European integration process. The present impasse looks even worse than the one of 1954, when it was once again France which -- after having been the main supporter of a European Defense Community -- buried the plan of an integrated, supranational European defense. In 1954, the deadlock resulted out of a strong unwillingness to abandon French national sovereignty both by nationalist and left-wing political parties; however, the issue was isolated to defense policy, and a solution was quickly found through Germany's reintegration into the Western security architecture -- i.e. the Western European Union and N.A.T.O -- the year after. Today, matters are far more complex. [See: "Intelligence Brief: European Constitution"]
Some analysts have correctly explained the internal political reasons that led millions of French citizens to identify the possible Constitutional Treaty's approval with an endorsement of the policies of French President Jacques Chirac and the recently dismissed French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. This drove the country to reject the treaty in order to punish the recent political course of the two statesmen. Other observers have highlighted the decisive role of left-wing and socialist themes, such as the defense of the welfare state, which many believe to be under assault by neo-liberal policies advocated by the E.U. Constitutional Treaty, in causing the failure of pro-Treaty supporters.
However, an important political novelty, potentially causing major geopolitical consequences in Europe, seems to be still overlooked: the rise of French pro-sovereignty movements.
Who Are The "Souverainistes"?
"Souverainisme," i.e. political and cultural nationalism, is nowadays rooted in the French political landscape, although the European and Western media tend to consider it a marginal and almost irrelevant phenomenon. It consists of political parties such as the right-of-center Movement for France (M.P.F.), associations, websites, intellectuals, and some individuals within the Christian-Democrats, socialist and neo-Gaullist political spectrum.
The word "souverainisme" has become popular in Québec (because of francophone autonomist movements) rather than France, but its penetration into the French political context has been facilitated by the Maastricht Treaty's implementation and the subsequent birth of an enlarged and more supranational European Union. Its roots are actually in the Gaullist legacy and in the French republican concept of nation, much more than in neo-populist trends. One of the main French sovereignist thinkers, General Pierre-Marie Gallois, was prominent in De Gaulle's military and a promoter of France's use of nuclear technology.
Although French sovereignism is not homogeneous but rather complex in nature (there are conservative-catholic proponents as well as left-wing republican ones), some of its concerns can all the same be summarized as follows: first of all, the nation-state is the only legitimate space in which political and economic sovereignty can be exerted; therefore, regionalist autonomist issues or supranational entities should be fought in order to preserve both the integrity and independence of the state. Secondly, all international agreements or strategic partnerships should not lead to a loss of national sovereignty. Thirdly, E.U.-sponsored supranational policies have led to a decline in national industrial power and to a logjam of research and development spending due to the very restrictive rules of European financial and monetary policies.
It would be trivial and inaccurate, however, to state that sovereignist leaders, such as Philippe de Villiers, head of the small M.P.F. party, or Jean-Pierre Chevènement, the former French defense minister part of the Socialist Party, are "against Europe." In fact, they stand for a different model of European policies, predicated upon strong partnerships among European nation-states. Cooperative industry, public transport, defense technologies, and strategic cooperation to counter excessive American influence over Europe are certainly on the sovereignist agenda. A supranational union is refused not because of hostility towards anything European, but because it's perceived as inefficient and counterproductive.
For right-wing sovereignists, the European Union is the epitome of technocracy and useless bureaucracy which suffocates the "animal spirits" of French capitalism. For left-wing, republican sovereignists, the E.U. is -- on the contrary -- a tool for international financial capital to successfully destroy the national welfare state and the French model of society. Both liberal-conservative and pro-socialist sovereignists perceive globalization as an Anglo-American strategy to conquer important shares of French and continental markets. It's not without reason that José Bové, one of the French anti-global leaders, expressed his satisfaction for the referendum's result in that it represents "the victory of the nation over globalization."
The referendum on the E.U. Constitutional Treaty opened a window of opportunity for all pro-sovereign movements to gain attention and spread their own influence. In fact, a malaise toward European integration and its economic and political consequences has appeared in French society for at least two years. Although France's 2004 G.D.P. growth was more than double that of Italy, and faster than that of several other E.U. states, many still consider it to be unsatisfactory.
The E.U.'s Growth and Stability Pact makes it difficult for Paris to use public spending in order to maintain leadership in the technological and industrial fields, and, from a political point of view, the 2002 decision of some European states like Poland, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Romania to support the U.S. military campaign in Iraq, and not the Franco-German combine's diplomacy efforts, has had important psychological effects: France discovered that many Eastern European countries seem to prefer a N.A.T.O.-based national security alliance rather than taking part in a European Security and Defense Policy led by Paris and Berlin (or even by a Franco-German-British triad). Committed Europeanists, therefore, lost momentum in French political discourse.
The European Paradox
The historical context in which pro-sovereignty movements are gaining strength is a fairly paradoxical one. For instance, it is incorrect to say that "Europe does not exist" due to the result of the recent referenda, an argument that many in this movement are making. On the contrary, the European main states such as France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium -- the "core" of the integration process -- obtained, at least formally, the strategic goals they had set in the early nineties. The E.U. now has a common currency, functioning political institutions like the European Council, the European Commission, and the European Parliament, in addition to security and defense assets such as the Political Committee for Security, the European Headquarters, a secretary general for foreign policy, and even a Rapid Reaction Force.
At the same time, this complex political, economic and military framework does not work in the way some Europeanists dreamt it would, and the E.U. simply has not become what French visionary personalities such as former French President François Mitterrand wanted. In particular, today's European Union is neither the source of a distinctly European vision of world politics, nor the political tool necessary to project French power in the age of globalization. If the international system is shifting from unipolarity to a proto-multipolar structure, it is because of China's rise as a great power, and not because of the European Union. The E.U.'s dramatic division in front of the Iraqi crisis of 2002-2003 was the crucial proof of its weakness as a real global player.
The European paradox is exactly this: the E.U.'s official goals have been reached, but the outcome is quite different from what its main supporters expected 15 years ago.
Geopolitical Consequences
In the aftermath of the double Franco-Dutch rejection of the Constitutional Treaty, European elites are in serious trouble. On the one hand, they know that the result is due to both domestic and European issues, and, consequently, they must strive to remain in power -- not only in Paris or The Hague, but also elsewhere, as the referenda are widely perceived as a political earthquake. On the other hand, they also know that they can't ignore the people's answer to the last decade's Europe-based policies.
As these elites don't appear to have a consistent "plan B," there will be a number of political and geopolitical implications. For the moment, the decisive moves will come precisely from Paris, as it is the source of the current crisis and it has probably the most fragmented political landscape. Political developments in France in the next one to two years are likely to have deep geopolitical consequences for Europe.
Four main questions, however, will need to be accurately analyzed immediately. First of all, will there be a possible return of a "European core" (Kerneuropa) option? This theory was first introduced by German politicians Karl Lamers and Wolfgang Schaeuble in 1994 and lately dismissed as an obsolete plan by German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer himself. Kerneuropa is nothing other than the "first circle" around the Franco-German axis including Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxemburg, setting it as the "magnet" for possible, wider expansions.
The second question will be the development of the already difficult relations between the founding states and the eastern and south-eastern "newcomers." At the heart of the enlargement issue will be the Turkish question, as Ankara's integration into the E.U. has probably been one of the reasons why many political forces in France became increasingly skeptical about the future of European integration. Whether Turkey is part of Europe has been fiercely debated for years, and the question probably has no definitive answer. However, from a purely geopolitical point of view, Turkish integration into the E.U. is not made any easier by "old Europe's" disenchantment with the enlargement.
The third question will be the transatlantic relationship. Here the problem is more complicated than it may seem. Many observers have already said that neoconservatives in Washington are celebrating the European self-sabotage with champagne. However, the Bush administration will be out of power in 2008, and American politics is not only that of neoconservative powerbrokers; indeed, after the intervention in Iraq went badly, they appear to have lost influence in Washington.
A widespread myth is that the U.S. is against European integration, but history shows that this belief is false. Washington has consistently backed the Old Continent's efforts to build common economic and political policies, as long as they are based upon free market principles and a strong commitment to the Atlantic Alliance. Therefore, a serious crisis in the E.U. could trigger anti-European trends that are far from welcomed by Washington. What if, for example, France and/or Germany opt for stronger military ties with China instead of building a common security policy embedded in the Atlantic framework? History has already shown some surprises, and what appears unthinkable today could become possible tomorrow.
The fourth question has to do with developments in the United Kingdom and in other European countries. Will London still hold a referendum now that the allegedly very Europeanist peoples of France and the Netherlands have already rejected the Treaty? Will other strong pro-sovereignty movements take off in European societies?
Conclusion
Especially in the 1990s, it was fashionable to say that nation-states were becoming obsolete. A unified world of free markets and international organizations was supposed to rise, thus throwing older policies and theories into history's trash can. Today's political and geopolitical realities tell us that nation-states are still very alive, and that national cultures matter much in shaping our political landscape. Recent attempts to build strong supranational entities such as the European Union have not nurtured the deep cultural changes necessary for their success, even when their formal goals have actually been reached.
The French pro-sovereignty movements are rooted in the heart of Europe's integration engine, and their contribution to the E.U. Constitutional Treaty's failure has been considerable. Pro-European Constitution parties are nonetheless still the most influential factions in France, and they will now have the opportunity to counter-attack. It is therefore very difficult to predict a further rise of parties like the M.P.F. or Jean-Pierre Chevènement's Republican Movement. However, a window of opportunity has opened for them along with a radically different vision of Europe: that of a common political space rather than a new political unit.
Report Drafted By: Federico Bordonaro
The Power and Interest News Report (PINR) is an independent organization that utilizes open source intelligence to provide conflict analysis services in the context of international relations. PINR approaches a subject based upon the powers and interests involved, leaving the moral judgments to the reader. This report may not be reproduced, reprinted or broadcast without the written permission of inquiries@pinr.com. All comments should be directed to content@pinr.com.
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