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French no vote on constitution rattles continent { May 31 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/31/international/europe/31france.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/31/international/europe/31france.html
May 31, 2005
French No Vote on European Constitution Rattles Continent
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
PARIS, May 30 - The shock waves of France's rejection of a constitution for Europe reverberated throughout the Continent on Monday, with Britain suggesting that it might cancel its own popular vote on the document and the naysayers in the Netherlands gaining even more confidence that a no vote will prevail in a referendum there on Wednesday.
In France, the vote plunged the center-right government into crisis. President Jacques Chirac will announce "decisions concerning the government" and make a declaration on French television on Tuesday.
The statement was interpreted to mean that he would dismiss Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin and reshuffle his cabinet as a direct result of the repudiation of Mr. Chirac's leadership in a referendum on the European Union constitution on Sunday.
There has been open speculation for months that Mr. Raffarin would be replaced if the constitution failed in France, and after a 30-minute meeting with Mr. Chirac in Élysée Palace on Monday, the affable but unpopular prime minister said, "There will be developments today or tomorrow."
He declined to say whether he had offered his resignation, telling reporters: "I'm going for a stroll around Paris. See you later."
The euro fell sharply on Monday as traders in the United States sold the currency a day after the French vote, slipping to a seven-month low of about $1.25 in late afternoon trading.
Farmers, workers and the unemployed were among those who led the way to the defeat of the European Union constitution in France, voting no in high numbers largely over concerns about the economy. European leaders who had promoted the constitution as the logical, if revolutionary, next step in the growth and unification of the 25-member bloc could not hide their disappointment.
The most serious potential foreign fallout from the no vote in France came on Monday from Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who called for a "time for reflection," saying it was too early to decide whether a popular vote could go ahead in his country.
"Underneath all this there is a more profound question, which is about the future of Europe and, in particular, the future of the European economy and how we deal with the modern questions of globalization and technological change," Mr. Blair told journalists during a vacation in Italy. Nine European Union members ratified the constitution before the French referendum. But France's no vote is likely to kill the constitution - at least in its current form - because it requires approval by all of the union's member countries.
In a sense, consideration of the constitution by other member countries, including the Dutch vote on Wednesday, is only a political exercise in democracy to allow each of them the right to proclaim approval or rejection. But the Dutch vote is important nonetheless.
At the moment there is no plan to revise the constitution and put it before member states again. If the Dutch also reject the constitution, it would be that much harder to persuade the rest of the member states to go forward with putting any document up for ratification, particularly those that plan to do it by popular vote.
"This is a critical moment in Europe's history," said Jean-Luc Dehaene, a former Belgian prime minister and one of the architects of the constitution, in a telephone interview. "It is clear that the French no brings Europe to a kind of standstill." The French, he said, "are completely without orientation and in a period of complete uncertainty."
The Netherlands, which like France was one of the six founding members of Europe's original union, "will not be in a position to play its leadership role in Europe if it votes no," Mr. Dehaene said. As for Britain, he added, "It is not impossible that the British government will hide behind the back of France to avoid the difficult discussion in Britain."
For the time being, the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, said he would announce a decision on whether to go ahead with a vote no earlier than next week.
Mr. Blair's tentative remarks contrasted with the bold approach taken by other European leaders, including Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany and Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, who said the ratification process must go on despite the French vote.
"Life continues," Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, said at ld a news conference at the union's headquarters in Brussels after France's repudiation of the treaty. "For me, the worst that could happen is if, as a consequence of that, you or the citizens of the European Union or the leaders of the European Union enter into a zone of paralysis psychologically."
In Washington, the State Department, in a brief statement on the vote, emphasized continuity in trans-Atlantic relations, not concern. The administration has remained aloof from the particulars of the constitutional debate.
"We welcome a strong, integrated Europe that is an effective partner for addressing the many challenges we face together," said a spokesman, Noel Clay. "We have such a partnership now with the European Union and expect to continue to build on this relationship, however the E.U. evolves."
The constitution is intended to provide an ambitious, streamlined system for growth and greater unity in the newly expanded 25-country bloc. If the document is abandoned, member states will have to continue working together under a cumbersome and limiting array of existing treaties and rules adopted when the union was smaller.
In an effort to salvage the European unification process, some European figures were sugarcoating their earlier dire predictions of the consequences of the French veto.
Not long ago, for example, Romano Prodi, the former president of the European Commission, had predicted that a French no would mean "the end of Europe." On Monday he called the outcome "a disaster," but insisted that the union would continue to function under current rules and that things could be worse.
"This is still better than a war of secession like the United States once had," he said in a telephone interview. "I'm serious now. We must keep this perspective in mind. We don't have a treaty, but we also don't have wars."
That is certainly true, but the lowest-common-denominator approach was not what the leaders of Europe had in mind when they embarked on the drafting of the constitution, a process that took two and a half years.
After the French vote, the European Commission president, José Manuel Durão Barroso, warned of "a risk of contagion."
Indeed, contagion could come as early as Wednesday, when voters in the Netherlands go to the polls to pass judgment on the constitution.
After the French vote, the Dutch prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, told reporters, "The Dutch, of course, do not take any orders from France." But a new Dutch poll taken after the French vote and made public on Monday for NOS public television showed an increase in voters intending to vote no to 55 percent, up from 51 percent just two days ago. Only 38 percent said they planned to vote in favor of the constitution.
President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic, whose country has yet to decide whether to support the charter, declared it "a thing of the past." He added, "The French referendum, and its result, clearly demonstrated the deep division that exists between the European elite and the citizens of Europe."
That view was underscored by the voting trends in the vote in France.
According to the Ipsos polling agency, 70 percent of farmers voted no, despite the fact that France is the largest recipient of European Union farm subsidies.
Public and blue-collar workers and the unemployed, all low-pay groups vulnerable in a country with more than 10 percent unemployment, voted no by 60 percent to 79 percent.
Although most of the Socialist Party hierarchy lobbied in favor of the treaty, 56 percent of Socialist voters rejected it. On the political extremes, 98 percent of the Communist Party and 93 percent of the extreme right National Front voted no.
Paris and Lyon, two of France's biggest cities, and pro-European regions like Alsace, Brittany and the Loire Valley voted yes, while rural France and smaller cities and towns voted no. Most surprisingly, 55 percent of people ages 18 to 25 rejected the treaty, underscoring what appeared to be a lack of trust in the future of Europe and the leadership of France.
Humiliated and badly weakened in the eyes of both his own citizens and the world, Mr. Chirac is now at one of the lowest points of his 10-year presidency. The French media openly mocked him today.
"Did he manage to sleep so well on Sunday night?" the weekly L'Express asked in its latest edition on Monday. "He must realize to what extent the failure of the referendum is a personal disaster."
Serge July, the editor of the left-leaning daily Libération, referred today to "the disastrous end" of Mr. Chirac's "reign," while the daily Le Monde said the president "begins the end of his mandate discredited."
In Poland, the daily Zycie Warszawy joked Monday about the "Polish plumber who petrified France," a reference to the mythical worker from new European Union members like Poland who is free to move west and willing to work for lower pay than Frenchmen.
On Monday, Mr. Chirac held closed-door meetings, not only with Mr. Raffarin but also with a number of officials who might possibly replace him, including Nicolas Sarkozy, the leader of their ruling Union for a Popular Movement but a political enemy of Mr. Chirac; Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin, considered like a political son to Mr. Chirac; Defense Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie; and François Bayrou, the leader of the Christian-right Union for French Democracy.
Mr. Raffarin is being blamed in some quarters for the rejection of the constitution because of opinion surveys indicating that voters used the ballot partly to punish the French government's failure to tackle high unemployment and painful cost-cutting changes.
Mr. de Villepin is considered the front-runner for the prime minister's job, but he is not liked by much of the French political establishment, including deputies in Parliament who consider him distant from the people and complain that he does not bother to consult them.
A CSA opinion poll for France 3 television showed that Mr. Sarkozy, the most popular politician on the right, was the public's choice with 25 percent of voters wanting him to become prime minister. Only 11 percent favored Mr. de Villepin.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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