Chirac wins in Europe - now for the home front
After two days of high-stake negotiations, President Jacques Chirac swayed EU leaders to accept his social agenda on protecting the welfare state.
Now he must use that ammunition to win over French voters in an attempt to get the EU constitution approved.
Chirac warned France’s recalcitrant electorate ahead of the May 29 referendum that it can vote down the constitution – but at its own peril.
France has always been the engine behind European integration, reaping the benefits for decades as the bloc grew from a Franco-German experiment to ensure peace after the Second World War into an economic juggernaut and an increasingly influential player in world politics.
And instead of having globalist liberal policies wash over France’s welfare state, Chirac has craftily used the EU to keep unbridled free-market doctrine at bay. Losing the respect of the EU by rejecting the constitution would be devastating, he warned.
“If France blocks the further construction of Europe, the consequence would be far-reaching,” he said in Brussels.
France, always a driving force in the EU until now, “would lose a large part of its authority, which it needs, in the Europe of tomorrow.”
In France, polls showed for the first time that the EU’s first constitution would be defeated by voters in the referendum – a result that would be a death knell for the ambitious EU project on which negotiators have worked for three years.
Chirac would hate to be identified with such failure but now thinks he has turned the tide. After he helped force through rules to allow for more budget deficit spending in lean years and stopping free market proposals in order to protect the welfare state, he was confident the vote would go his way.
Asked what he would do if voters rejected the constitution, he retorted that he could “not imagine France finding itself in that situation.”
By forcing wholesale changes to an EU liberalisation plan unpopular in France, Chirac may have mustered important political firepower to counter an electorate suspicious of free-market EU reforms.
“We completely need to go back to the drawing board,” he said.
Much like the social concessions he obtained on the EU’s services directive, Chirac said the EU’s constitution would also promote social rights and more equality.
“If there is a link between the two, it has to be a positive one,” he said.
“The new constitutional treaty will seriously increase the social requirements, social guarantees and reduce the risk of aggravating social problems,” he said.
During the summit, he found a soulmate in German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who was instrumental in helping push through Chirac’s demands.
And Schroeder said today he was willing to walk the extra mile for Chirac, ready to campaign with him during the run-up to the referendum.
“Europe needs France but France also needs Europe,” Schroeder said. Like France, Germany would also suffer if the constitution is rejected.
The document streamlines EU decision-making, ending vetoes in almost 50 new policy areas, including judicial and police cooperation, education and economic policy. But veto rights remain in sensitive areas such as foreign affairs, defence, social security, taxation and culture.
The constitution gives the EU simpler voting rules, ensuring that decisions are adopted if at least 65% of the member states agree and they represent at least 55% of the EU population of 455 million people.
Chirac reasons the new voting rules provide another reason to back the treaty.
“In this new system, France has everything to gain and nothing to lose since its specific clout in Europe will be further increased.”
A Europe with a lightweight France would lose its Franco-German axis, the bedrock of the continent’s remarkable post-war economic and political integration that has been a magnet for smaller nations to join the union.
However, even if France approves the constitution, it could still be scuppered by upcoming referendums in at least seven more nations, including traditional euro-sceptics Denmark and Britain. Spain has already voted in favour of the charter, and parliaments will decide in the other nations.
