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French workers rallied to defeat constitution { May 31 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/31/international/europe/31cnd-france.html?hpFrench farmers, workers and the unemployed were among those who rallied to defeat the constitution, voting 'no' in high numbers largely over concerns about the economy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/31/international/europe/31cnd-france.html?hp
May 31, 2005
French Leader Fires Premier in Response to E.U. Rejection
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
PARIS, May 31 - President Jacques Chirac of France named his longtime protégé, Dominique de Villepin, as prime minister today in an effort to restore confidence in his government after the country's rejection of a Constitution for Europe.
Mr. de Villepin, 51, who has never served in an elected office, was Europe's most vocal opponent of the American-led war in Iraq as foreign minister before becoming interior minister 15 months ago.
In a brief televised address this evening, Mr. Chirac said that he appointed Mr. de Villepin because he has "the necessary authority, competence and experience." Mr. de Villepin replaces Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who resigned in the wake of the no vote.
Mr. Chirac insisted that the rejection by the French of the referendum on the European Union constitution on Sunday "is a demand to be listened to. It is a demand for action. It is a demand for results." To that end, the president promised that the top priority of the new government would be the creation of jobs.
But Mr. de Villepin, a former career diplomat who writes poetry and long tomes on historical figures like Napoleon in his spare time, knows little about the French economy. His appointment seemed based less on his concrete vision for reducing unemployment and jump-starting the French economy than on the fact that President Chirac trusts him.
Mr. de Villepin served as the French leader's closest advisor in the first seven years of his presidency, and Mr. Chirac once described him as "a little like a son."
And underscoring the urgency of the situation as he prepares for the
last 22 months of his presidency, Mr. Chirac also announced that he was appointing a political foe, Nicolas Sarkozy, the head of their ruling center-right party, to a key cabinet post. Mr. Sarkozy, who is the most popular politician on the right, is widely expected to be named interior minister, a post he has held once before.
Late last year, Mr. Chirac forced Mr. Sarkozy to resign from his job as finance minister after he decided to run for the leadership of their party as a springboard for his bid for the presidency in 2007.
The choice of Mr. de Villepin sends the signal that Mr. Chirac, despite his pledges, has little intention of shifting course in his final two years in office and making the hard decisions that will put the French economy back on track.
After the resignation of Mr. Raffarin was announced, Mr. Raffarin made a short statement defending his record over the past three years.
The former prime minister 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 disliked 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.
On Monday, the shock waves from France's rejection of a constitution for Europe reverberated throughout the Continent, with Britain suggesting that it might cancel its own popular vote on the document. The naysayers in the Netherlands, meanwhile, gained even more confidence that a 'no' vote will prevail in a referendum there on Wednesday.
French farmers, workers and the unemployed were among those who rallied to defeat the constitution, 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.
Nine European Union members ratified the constitution before the French referendum. But France's thumbs-down 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 on Wednesday, is only a political exercise in democracy, allowing 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 planning 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, Mr. Dehaene added, "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.
"Life continues," the European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said at 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," Mr. Solana said.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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