Fri, May 27, 2005 page9

• Sunday's referendum triggers national identity crisis

  A bout of introspection is sweeping the historically pro-European country as vote unearths concerns over future of domestic social model

  • By Jon Henley / THE GUARDIAN
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  Last Saturday afternoon at the Palais des Sports in Paris, a dapper aristocrat called Philippe de Villiers assembled some 5,000 people who presumably had other things to do. His posters, plastered everywhere, were eloquent: "We all," they said, "have a good reason to vote no."

  For one pundit, it is about "the last kick of the dying French exception." Another cites "the bankruptcy of the political class."

  For a third, the explanation lies in "our essential ungovernability;" a fourth believes France is "in the grip of a profound identity crisis."

  France's referendum on the European constitution on Sunday has plunged the nation into a bout of tortured introspection. And at present -- as a seventh successive poll confirmed yesterday -- what has emerged is a clear temptation to say "non."

  "It's intriguing," said Pascal Perrineau, director of Cevipof, the Center for the Study of French Political Life," because there is a historical, if passive, consensus in France in favor of Europe.

  "But as soon as you ask a concrete question, pro-EU sentiment melts,'' he said.

  The concrete question is simply: Do you approve the treaty establishing a European constitution? But what it has triggered is not so much a melting of pro-EU sentiment as a meltdown of French certainties and confidence -- of France's view of itself and its place in the world.

  COMPLAINTS

  Besides the clear-cut anti-Europeanism of the far right and the far left, and the deep unpopularity of the present center-right government, a mass of less precise complaints and concerns -- what Perrineau calls "the confluence of very many sources of unease and discontent'' -- are fuelling France's no vote.

  Some are permanent features: a perennial spirit of revolt -- "Every so often, we just want to say Merde!'' said the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe -- and the French tendency to favor ideals, principles and ideologies over facts, reality and pragmatism. The ill-concealed presidential ambitions of some campaign leaders, notably the champion of the leftwing no vote, Laurent Fabius, is also a factor.

  But for the writer Denis Tillinac, the root problem is one of identity.

  "Today one is European, and only residually French," he said. "That was fine in a Europe with six or 12 members: we know the Italians, the Germans. But a Europe of 25? We don't know who or where we are."

  Eric Zemmour, a commentator on Le Figaro, defines the problem as a loss of French influence.

  "We exported democracy across a continent; we defined the notion of universal human rights," he said. "And now we learn it's all worthless, that Europe's going to decide?"

  Several commentators, including leading pollster Roland Cayrol, have noted that blue and lower-grade white-collar workers, the self-employed and farmers are planning to vote no, whereas professionals, managers and graduates are opting for the yes. "There's a clear division between a well-off, confident France and an anxious, struggling France," Cayrol said. "These are two countries."

  For analyst Alain Duhamel, France is suffering from "a generalized economic malaise, inspired by rising unemployment, stagnant salaries, falling spending power, pension worries, the fear of jobs being lost abroad, of Poles and Lithuanians taking jobs here. It's a no to today's world; a no to a frightening world."

  `Anglo-Saxon' model

  That, perhaps more than anything else, is what has prompted the most frequently heard argument against the treaty: that it enshrines a vision of an over-competitive, free-market, "Anglo-Saxon" Europe that will kill French jobs and destroy France's social and public services.

  The "Anglo-Saxon model" is cited repeatedly as the example to be avoided -- even by the constitution's defenders, who say it will protect France against economic liberalism.

  "It's extraordinary," said Eric Morgan de Rivery, an EU specialist with the law firm Jones Day. "It's as if people are just discovering the market, when it's been part of Europe since 1957."

  For de Rivery, successive governments "have lacked both honesty and pedagogy in talking about Europe. All have blamed Brussels for every uncomfortable decision ... None have explained that European values, French values, are not antithetical to the market."

  Such is the dread inspired by the word "reform," most particularly "liberal reform," that despite a persistently high unemployment rate of 10 percent and a welfare state that, most economists agree, France can no longer afford, only one politician has so far dared suggest France should vote yes because it needs to change.

  "The best social model is no longer our social model," Nicolas Sarkozy told a rally last week. "The question is this: Can France escape the effort, the work, the questioning, the reforms that some of our European neighbors have put in before us? My answer is no. Europe demands that we change."

  TIME FOR CHANGE

  The message seems clear: for years no French politician has dared admit that in a globalizing world, the French model was going to become untenable without some fairly far-reaching reform (particularly, economists say, to its over-regulated labor market).

  "We're witnessing one of the last remnants of the French exception," de Rivery said. "French society is different to American society or British society. But we have to adapt. The constitution has confronted France with a debate it should have been having for a decade or more. And now we risk blaming Europe for our own immobilism."
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