France Should Say 'Non'

PARIS—Oceans have run under the bridge and times have changed since former French president Valéry Giscard-d’Estaing visited Harvard in October 2003 to tout his then-in-the-works treaty establishing a constitution for the European Union (EU).

When he spoke about the document at the Kennedy School of Government, his excitement undiminished by his tremulous English, it appeared that a stronger Union was in the making and that dreams of a great Europe were about to be realized. A Europe with a Union president and a minister of foreign affairs, a Europe capable of making the rest of the world feel its weight, maybe even a Europe that wouldn’t let the United States call all the shots. But the final draft, signed one year later by the heads of all 25 member states, seems meant for anything but a vision like that one. Instead, if it is allowed to take effect, it will gently wreck those high hopes for a counterweight of real significance to American supremacy.

That’s where France comes in. Whereas most heads of state chose to have the treaty ratified by the surefire approach of a parliamentary vote, ten others, including Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, and Rodríguez Zapatero, daringly preferred to call a high-stakes popular referendum. High-stakes indeed, since the treaty requires unanimous ratification of all the member states and one vote gone wrong can spoil the party for everybody. The trouble is that the last thirteen polls have the French voting “no” on May 29, and Chirac is getting nervous. Last Thursday he even pleaded for a “yes” vote in a prime-time televised conversation with 80 young voters at the Palais de l’Elysée, France’s White House, going so far as to admit that he felt pained by what he called their age group’s fear of the future.

It won’t be any fun for Chirac if his country breaks the European chain of ratification. Still, France can and must sink this treaty. If the unpleasant task were left to the perennially euro-skeptic British, the vote would be interpreted as a refusal to commit, but France can still demand something better to commit to, and should while there is still time.

The treaty originates from and underpins undemocratic processes. Unlike almost any other document of constitutional pretensions in democratic history (including the one currently being created in Baghdad), it was composed not by a freely elected assembly but by an unelected Convention presided by Giscard-d’Estaing. Like a rerun, it lays out already well-known principles of economic integration in the EU: severely limited powers for the directly elected European Parliament and free rein for the appointed European Commission to demolish obstacles to the competitive marketplace whatever their form. A multitude of other provisions prohibit harmonizing labor laws in the name of competition, underscoring the primacy of the unadulterated free market, while the possibility of European norms promoting social progress emerges as an afterthought, if that.

Furthermore, the treaty, sadly, is hardly the visionary, forward-looking document hailed by Giscard-d’Estaing, Chirac and its other promoters. Instead, it consists largely of a restatement of past European treaties. The Convention would have revisited and reconsidered these elements if its genuine ambition had really been to strengthen and distinguish the Union as a specifically European political project. But that was not the goal.

Consequently Europe is left with a constitutional proposal nearly immune to amendment (see article 443) that dooms the Union to the inertia of trade liberalization, and to economic muscle without any special political merit. Worst of all, the proposal is so hopelessly lengthy and technical that it is incapable of stimulating the least enthusiasm among European citizens. On February 20, 77 percent of Spaniards approved the treaty by referendum, but the turnout, at 42 percent, was the lowest of any national vote since the death of Franco.

But the citizens who do seek the truth—the draft is a bestseller in French bookstores—will have to confront the dangerous misconceptions spread by promoters of the “yes” vote. To pressure voters to join his position, Chirac would have them believe it will be the end of Europe and the end of France if the referendum fails, when really, the end of Chirac is the worst that could happen. Furthermore, with the help of sloppy journalists, the constitution’s advocates have irresponsibly conflated opposition to the treaty with opposition to European integration (which is déjà vu for those Americans who were called unpatriotic when they spoke out against the war on Iraq out of concern for their country).

The truth is that the vast majority of the opponents of the constitutional treaty are anything but opposed to European integration. European integration can mean much more than the political elite’s version consisting of simply of free trade and fair competition, which are de rigueur but not sufficient. For France, European integration can and should mean believing that an alternative model of power with its own distinctive political inspiration is still possible, and saying so before it’s too late.

Daniel B. Holoch ’06, a Crimson editorial editor, is an environmental science and public policy concentrator in Quincy House.