JOSÉ MANUEL BARROSO, the President of the European Commission, stirred uproar in the French Parliament yesterday when he urged France to snap out of its gloom and stop behaving like a hypochondriac.

The former Portuguese Prime Minister triggered a storm of booing and cries of "scandal" from the left-wing Opposition when he tackled France’s anti-European mood head-on in the first address to the National Assembly by a chief of the EU executive.

"As an attentive reader of your press, I gather that France seems to be suffering from melancholy. I even hear the word ‘malaise’," Senhor Barroso said. He cited the famed 17th-century comedy whose title has become the byword for hypochondria. "I wonder if the country of Molière may not be giving in to the temptation of the malade imaginaire," he said. Amid the jeering, the words prompted a few "bravos" from the conservative benches.

Senhor Barroso wanted to convince France to overcome the mood of despair that caused it to reject the EU constitution in a referendum in May and which is fuelling public resistance to economic reform on the national and European level. "It seems to me that, on the contrary, France has every reason to be confident," he said, citing "amazing global success stories" of Airbus and the Ariane European rocket programme, which are both based in France.

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