Charles Bremner, Paris Correspondent of The Times, says today’s rejection of the European Constitution is a massive humiliation for President Chirac and a repudiation of the entire French political establishment.

Can you explain the vote?

It’s a massive ‘no’, a heavy rejection of the constitution and a huge humiliation for President Chirac. It’s also a huge repudiation of the political establishment – all the major parties were in favour of this constitution.

Over the past 20 years, and especially over the past ten years, the French have been very unhappy with the direction Europe is taking, they were especially unhappy with enlargement. Many people think that Britain now runs the European Union and that the constitution is seen as a British-engineered document, even if in fact it’s a compromise. And they see the constitution as a document that attacks French traditions of social welfarism.

How does it reflect on President Chirac?

It’s a reflection of Chirac’s inability to connect with the electorate and not just Chirac, but the Opposition as well. The reason is that neither the Right nor the Left in France has been able to explain the modern world to the French people - the French are very traditional, conservative, very prone to striking and revolution (the revolution is for when their conservatism runs out). Other countries have accepted the need to reform their states to handle the world free-trade economy, France has not yet. Although sectors of the French economy are very competitive, the French public at large thinks it should be protected against globalisation and the French political world has not done that.

French political leaders know perfectly well that they can’t close the country off, so it will be interesting to see what happens. Chirac will promise many things, as usual. He will sack the prime minister, Raffarin, and install a new cabinet that will be more committed to the social wellbeing of the country, less business-friendly.

What will happen in Brussels and London?

There will be a big post-mortem. Brussels will say it’s business as usual and they’ll try to carry on with the constitution, they’ll try to carry on with ratification by other countries if possible. Tony Blair will try to wriggle out of it, saying that the constitution has been killed by France and so there won’t need to be a British referendum. But that’s not the thinking of most of the other countries. The logic of it is that every country has to be asked in some form to ratify the treaty, either through parliament or referenda. There’s been one referendum in Spain already and there’s another this week in the Netherlands.

Could the EU constitution have survived any other country rejecting it?

The constitution could have survived the Netherlands saying ‘no’, because it’s a smallish country, it could survive the Czech Republic rejecting it, which is a possibility, but it couldn’t survive France, a founding member, rejecting it, because France is a central pillar of the Union and a founding state. It could even survive Britain rejecting it, because Britain usually rejects everything.

Why did the French say “no”, if the entire establishment was urging a “yes” vote?

To stick it to the establishment – and precisely because the establishment was urging them to vote ‘yes’. There is a lot of anger towards the Chirac government, for its attempts to reform the welfare state, which have involved reducing unemployment benefits, reducing pension eligibility and medical care.

France has a very lavish and wasteful national health service and they’ve been trying to rein in the costs but there is a feeling that the state is cutting their benefits. Also living standards have slipped behind both Britain and other richer countries in the EU. The French economy has almost stagnated in the last few years and real incomes have stagnated.

There is a feeling that the country is not doing well and there is a great amount of anxiety in the air about France being hurt by aggressive new trading states, especially outside the European Union

What is the next step for the EU?

There’s a European summit coming up next month, chaired by Luxembourg and they’ll have to decide what to do. People will probably suggest that other countries continue with their ratification and that France votes again in some form. They might change the treaty or pull out the minimal parts that can be endorsed by France. They can simplify it and take out the bits that are simply changing the voting weight in the European Council, which favour France in fact, and changing the management of the European institutions, putting them under the control of individuals, creating a European president and foreign minister.

If France doesn’t ratify it, there’s no treaty, but Europe will continue to function under the Nice Treaty, the existing treaty. This document essentially tinkered with decision-making procedures and just codified what was in existing treaties and added some language about goals for Europe. It really doesn’t contain any great leap in any direction, much less than the Maastricht treaty did, which had monetary union.

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