The voices of Europe's ruling class are growing shriller as the daunting prospect of a French rejection of the EU's constitutional treaty creeps closer. But the political aristocracy's clamor may be falling on deaf ears.
French President Jacques Chirac's warnings about the dire consequences of voting "non" in France's treaty referendum on May 29 have begun to sound almost panicky. France could "cease to exist politically" he said last week. Its influence in the EU would be severely diminished. And Europe's ambitions to play a bigger role in the world would be shattered.
Compared with the US, "there is a sort of culture of pessimism in our countries," Chirac said during a joint appearance in Paris with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder.
"When you have this cult of pessimism, naturally it does not foster creativity," he said.
Things must be bad when France's leader compares his country unfavorably to President George W. Bush's America.
The assessment offered by Romano Prodi, the former president of the EU commission, teetered on the apocalyptic. A constitutional collapse would be a "catastrophe," he said.
"We would pass through a long period of crisis. There would be no more Europe," he said.
Even by the dramatic standards of Italian political opera, that seemed like a slight exaggeration.
Like Chirac, Javier Solana, who is tipped to become the EU's first "foreign minister" if the treaty is ratified by all 25 member states, also blamed the voters rather than the treaty's architects.
"Europeans are suffering from self-doubt at a moment when the world needs Europe all the more," Solana said.
Many non-Europeans, including America's Republican right, might quibble with this presumptuous claim.
As for Schroder, he appeared in fatalistic mood, as befits a man facing record unemployment at home and another humiliating state election defeat this month. On present trends, Germany's chancellor will join the welfare lines himself next year.
"We will reproach ourselves later if we let slip this historic opportunity ... Our children, our children's children will reproach us," Schroder said in Paris.
All Europeans were hoping that France "remains true to its promises," he said.
This is not entirely accurate.
In France itself, two-dozen opinion polls have suggested that a majority hopes the treaty will be defeated. Even as Chirac spoke, trade unions quietly called on their members to back "a fairer, more supportive society" -- and vote non. Across Europe, the EU's own Eurobarometer polls have shown a steady decline in public enthusiasm for the union.
The most recent opinion surveys in France show that the race is tightening. It could still go either way -- and old campaigners suspect the French government may get its way in the end -- as it did over the Maastricht treaty in 1992, which passed by a whisker.
But the fact that some of the main arguments of pro-treaty campaigners are failing to make headway carries a disturbing message about the EU's future ambitions. The idea, for example, that rejection could weaken the EU's common foreign and security policy may not be seen in some quarters as a totally bad thing.
It is true that the treaty's collapse could have fateful implications for future EU enlargement, including Turkey's accession talks that are due to begin in October.
"Rejection would have a ripple effect," a senior French diplomat said. "In places like Ukraine and the Balkans, it would encourage reactionary nationalist forces living in the past."
It is also entirely possible that a non on May 29 may spark a run on the euro in the financial markets.
But despite all these potentially damaging consequences, it is opposition to what is widely portrayed as a charter for liberal "Anglo-Saxon" free-market economics, social vandalism and over-reaching, vainglorious Euro-political elitism that seems to have greater, instinctive appeal for many voters.
The grassroots themes resonate across the political spectrum.
In France, such opposition finds expression in the phrase France d'en bas -- France from below. And it is these gut rejectionist instincts among electorates that feel themselves ignored, combined with local political factors and a large dose of apathy, which presently obscure the bigger picture painted by Europe's leaders.
In the Netherlands, as a result, the outcome of its treaty referendum on June 1 is also in doubt. Much the same holds true, for differing reasons, for planned referendums in other states, notably the Czech Republic, Denmark and Poland.
And then there is Britain, traditionally the most Eurosceptic member. As matters stand now, the treaty has little or no chance of success.
Ironically, it was British Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision to hold a referendum that forced Chirac, against his better political instincts, to follow suit.
Blair, a supposedly strong pro-European, has never missed an opportunity to duck the treaty issue in the British general election campaign. Like his opponents, Blair knows it is a vote-loser. Downing Street has indicated that, if France votes non, then plans for the British referendum next year will be scrapped, whatever the Luxembourg EU presidency says.
It is in this discouraging context that the high-flown rhetoric of Europe's political aristocracy about the treaty's symbolic and historic significance must be placed. And it is in this political abattoir that the disaffected, routinely ignored and hitherto unheard peoples of several European countries, led as in the past by France, may yet take a guillotine to their ambitions.
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