A RISING star of the French right has turned on Britain in an increasingly desperate campaign to win backing for the European Union constitution, which is expected to be rejected in a referendum on May 29.
Until now, Britain-bashing in the French referendum battle had been the preserve of the predominantly leftist “no” campaigners who regard the constitution as a “Trojan horse” for “Anglo-Saxon free market savagery” and like to proclaim: “No to the Europe of Tony Blair!” Yet Dominique de Villepin, the upper-class interior minister, has elevated the tone of the scaremongering by invoking a novel by Julian Barnes in a curious warning to France of what could go wrong if it turns down the constitution.
“When Julian Barnes rails about his country, the United Kingdom, becoming an open-air museum for tourists from abroad, it serves as a warning for the whole of our continent,” wrote the eccentric de Villepin in European Man, a book of essays intended to boost the flagging “yes” campaign.
De Villepin, a former foreign minister and hero of French resistance to the Iraq war, was referring to Barnes’s 1998 novel England, England, in which a ruthless tycoon creates an England theme park for tourists on the Isle of Wight.
The book depicts the triumph of a “Europe of entertainment and indifference”, says de Villepin, who appeared to be warning that only the constitution could keep Europe from descending into the free-for-all capitalist jungle illustrated by Barnes.
The “no” campaigners, however, argue that the constitution would create the conditions for an economic model the British want to impose. They are deaf to the entreaties of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former French president who chaired the Brussels convention that drafted the constitution.
If the constitution were part of an Anglo-Saxon plot, Giscard reasoned on Friday, why was the document being “stigmatised on the other side of the Channel as a kind of centralising socialism”? This was reason enough, he suggested, for the French to feel good about voting “yes”. But they do not.
The “no” vote surged last week to average 56% across several polls and, just when it needed a show of unity, the government risked falling apart after the well-read de Villepin challenged Jean-Pierre Raffarin’s performance as prime minister and applied for his job.
Although the unpopular Raffarin has managed to keep his post — and the support of President Jacques Chirac — more trouble is looming for him with the threat of giant protest marches and a general strike on May 16. This will not help the “yes” side in the referendum two weeks later.
There is scarcely a sector that has not been on strike recently as Raffarin tries to push through unpopular social and economic reforms, but one unifying grievance is the abolition of the May 16 Pentecost holiday by a prime minister who has warned his country risks turning into a giant “holiday camp” and should work harder.
He may be right, but many employers, including the giant SNCF railway company, are urging their workers to take the day off regardless of what Raffarin says, a humiliating blow to a man whose survival thus far is nothing short of miraculous.
He will almost certainly be sacked if France says “no” to the constitution and de Villepin made abundantly clear his hunger to succeed him by suggesting last Sunday that France needed a new prime minister, regardless of how it voted in the referendum.
There could scarcely be two figures more different than Raffarin and de Villepin. Raffarin, a rotund, rumpled figure, is a self-proclaimed “bumpkin from the provinces”, a former wholesale coffee salesman from Poitou-Charentes.
De Villepin, by contrast, is a tall, elegantly dressed aristocrat who writes poetry and books in his spare time and feels that his talents are not being stretched enough in his role as the country’s “top cop”.
In his capacity as everybody’s favourite punchbag, Raffarin is used to absorbing blows but decided to fight back when he said de Villepin had gone “off track”, adding: “That happens when you go too fast.”
The political jitters over the constitution were not limited to Chirac’s centre right. The Socialists were also tearing themselves apart over Europe as they tried to celebrate the 100th anniversary of their foundation, with their leader advocating a “yes” vote while other top figures in the party prepared to vote “no”.
Most experts have argued that a “no” vote would effectively kill off the constitution, since all 25 EU members must approve the document for it to come into effect.
Yet Luxembourg, which currently holds the presidency of the EU, is expected to call on other members to ratify the treaty in the event of a French “no”, on the grounds that allowing France to decide the issue for the whole of Europe would not be democratic.
At the same time, a guide to the constitution, sponsored by Giscard, spells out quite clearly what should happen if any country says “no”. That country, says the booklet, “will probably be asked either to reconsider by submitting the constitution once more to a popular vote or to take the consequences of its refusal by envisaging its withdrawal from the union, thus allowing the constitution to enter into effect among those states that have signed and ratified it ”.
It is inconceivable that France, a founding member of the EU, would be asked to leave but a decision on how to proceed in the event of a “no” in France or Holland, which votes three days later, will be taken at an EU summit on June 16. According to a poll published last night, the “no” vote has also nudged ahead in Holland.
Six countries have ratified the constitution and the remaining members, including Britain, have until November 2006 to do so. “Let’s not be pessimistic,” said Giscard. “One French person in two does not know if he will go and vote. One voter in three has not yet made up his mind. That leaves a margin.”
His refrain was echoed by a tabloid newspaper last week that proclaimed: “Yes, the yes can still win.” To many voters, it looked like wishful thinking.
