EUROPEAN leaders joined in a desperate attempt yesterday to head off rejection of the European Union constitution in tomorrow’s referendum as French campaign leaders feuded over the prospects of staging a second vote.

Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Spanish Prime Minister, attended rallies in Toulouse and Lille to urge voters to not forsake the European Union. Their target, as left-wing leaders, was the mass of supporters of the Socialist Opposition who are planning to vote “no” to punish President Chirac and his unpopular centre-right Government. The final pre-vote polls put the “no” at 55-56 per cent, with one in five voters still undecided.

Opinion was sounded before a plea to the French from President Chirac on Thursday night to put aside their grievances with him and save the EU from destruction. His performance was given mixed reviews, with many commentators describing it as too late to save a bungled campaign.

“Panic at the Elysée Palace,” said page one of Le Parisien. M Chirac congratulated Herr Schröder yesterday on the ratification of the treaty by the German Bundesrat (Upper House). “Germany and France wanted and largely inspired this constitution, a treaty which enables Europe to become stronger and more democratic,” he said.

The “no” camps on both Left and Right were confident that they had won. “The game is over and it would be wrong to take this as a simple bit of bad temper by the French,” Jean-Marie Le Pen, chief of the far-right National Front, said. “There is a deep current of rejection,” he added.

The main dispute in the closing hours of the campaign was over calls from “yes” campaigners for France to be given the chance to vote again next year if the treaty is ratified by most other member states. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former French President who headed the treaty drafting, said: “There would not be any other solution. At the end of the process of ratification, those who have not approved the constitution will be asked to vote again.”

Renegotiation was out of the question, he said.

The proposal, backed in principle by François Hollande, leader of the pro-“yes” Socialist Party, prompted ridicule from the “no” campaign. Laurent Fabius, the former Socialist Prime Minister who is leading the left-wing “no” campaign, said: “Once the French people have taken their decision, the President’s duty is to execute the wishes of the people and nothing else,” he said.

Henri Emmanuelli, another Socialist “no” champion, said that M Giscard was “showing disdain for the sovereignty of the people”.

There is, however, widespread agreement in France and around the Continent over the need for all the remaining EU states to continue the ratification process if France rejects the treaty. M Chirac is expected to call for this on Monday if the treaty is rejected in France.

This means that pressure will continue on Tony Blair to submit the existing treaty to a vote. “Yes” campaigners said that the vote could swing in their favour because many French people would ultimately flinch from sabotaging a French pro-ject. M Chirac was said to be pessimistic as he contemplated the likelihood of a debacle that would sap French influence in Europe and consign him to the status of lame duck until the end of his term in 2007. M Chirac could become only the second leader to lose a referendum since the founding of the Fifth Republic in 1958. De Gaulle resigned after losing in 1969, but M Chirac has vowed to stay on. Libération said: “There was something pathetic in Chirac yesterday as he attempted to save himself against the disaster for which he sowed the seeds.”

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