SEAGULLS hovered behind a tractor crossing a windswept field outside Paris last week. At the controls of the vehicle was Pierre-Emmanuel Lavaux, a 46-year-old farmer whose face was set in a scowl as he pondered the amount of ploughing still to be done.

It was not just the tedious work that was getting him down, however. These days he worries about his livelihood in the face of growing competition in Europe.

“The bigger the European Union gets, the weaker our agriculture will become,” he said. “It will become that much harder to survive.”

For decades France’s farmers have been the envy of Europe for the rich rewards they reap from generous EU subsidies — in Lavaux’s case about £60 an acre — but that cosy arrangement is under threat in an enlarged EU no longer dominated by the French.

“Everything has changed for the worse,” said Lavaux.

It seemed the height of ingratitude, given President Jacques Chirac’s long record of support for the farmers, but Lavaux was looking forward to the chance of registering his disgust by voting “non” in a referendum on the EU constitution on May 29.

He is not alone. To the dismay of the government, a poll yesterday showed that the “no” vote had increased to 55% as the French relished the chance to vent their anger over a variety of issues — few of them to do with the constitution.

Chirac has tried not to panic. Today he is indulging his passion for all things Japanese with an Easter break of sumo wrestling, kabuki and sushi. “Five years without visiting Japan, that was unbearable for me,” he told a Japanese newspaper, explaining his visit to Tokyo.

He is expected to kick off his referendum campaign on his return by addressing the nation on television on April 3 and will make several other appearances that are being carefully choreographed by Claude, his daughter and chief image consultant. One meeting is expected to put him face to face with a selection of “European youth”.

Chirac’s team has to be careful how it uses him, however. He is not that popular, as his government tries to push through social and economic reforms. His appeals for help could backfire, with voters voicing their anger by ticking the “non” box.

Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the prime minister, has gone on the offensive, announcing on Thursday that the government had set up a website to help to explain the constitution, which was drafted at a convention chaired by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former French president.

Most politicians argue that a vote against the constitution is a vote against Europe. François Bayrou, a centre-right figure, told farmers in Le Mans on Thursday: “France cannot keep its hand on the tiller if it steps out of the boat.”

Yet France has already lost the grip it once kept on the European helm. The centre of power has moved eastwards after the EU’s expansion to what were once the satellite states of the Soviet Union. The days in which “old Europe” — as Donald Rumsfeld, the American defence secretary, referred to France and Germany — dictated the pace of integration appear to be past.

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