Over sausage sandwiches and vast amounts of beer and local wine, the thousands of Frenchmen stood around and argued over how best to save France. Save France from Europe, that is, the Europe that France played perhaps the most crucial role in building a half-century ago. But now, say the anti-globalizers and anti-imperialists, the farmers and factory workers who crammed into the smoky exhibition hall in this southern city, Europe has lost its way. They may be treated like traitors and imbeciles by their opponents, they add, but they call themselves patriots. "I feel like a rock star," said Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a Socialist senator from Essonne, as he was hugged and kissed by fans for breaking with his party and joining the no camp. "People stop me on the streets to tell me their problems and ask for my opinion about the constitution. I tell them it is absolutely monstrous." Poll after poll predicts that the French will reject the constitutional treaty in a referendum on Sunday. If that happens, certainly the 25-country EU will go on as before under existing treaties and France, one of the original six founders, will remain one of its most important members. But rejection will have deep repercussions for both France and Europe. It will be a humiliating personal defeat for President Jacques Chirac. Chirac confidently announced last July that the constitution would be decided by a popular referendum and not by the Parliament. His personal approval rating, meanwhile, slipped to an eight-year low of 39 percent in a BVA-L'Express poll released on May 20.
A no vote could paralyze decision-making in the EU for months, delay agreement on the Union's next seven-year budget, slow down the torturous process of admitting new members, inhibit the ability of the EU to project power as a bloc in foreign and economic policy, and make it even more difficult to impose discipline on member's spending and inflation levels. Even if a decision is made to continue the ratification process until all member states decide which way to go, the constitution needs a unanimous yes to come into force. In short, a no vote in France will at the very least slow down the forward momentum of a Europe as a united force. The "partisans for the no," as the rejectionists on both ends of the political spectrum are called, are already celebrating.
On Friday night, it was a gathering of leftists. They wore badges and carried balloons declaring that to love Europe is to vote no. They bought $5-a-bottle merlot made by an area cooperative with custom-designed labels that said no. They sang along to Edith Piaf's "Non, je ne regrette rien." They chanted "No, no, all together, all together," as speaker after speaker told them they were right. A handful of workers from the local IBM factory told stories of jobs that had moved to places like Slovakia, the Philippines and China. "This is a democratic insurrection," José Bové, the sheep farmer and union leader who is France's most visible opponent of globalization, told the cheering crowd. He proposed what he called an "amusing action" for the day after the referendum: He said that all French voters should take the copies of the constitution that they received in their mailboxes, "put them in envelopes and send them back" to Chirac.
The campaign underscores another political phenomenon as well: a vast gap between the French elite and ordinary voters. "There is a real division in French society today between France from on high and France from below," said Jean-Paul Fournier, the center-right mayor of Nîmes, who supports the constitution, but whose citizens voted in 1992 against the EU treaty that ushered in the euro. In a poll in the Midi Libre newspaper released on May 20, 61 percent of the population of the French province of Gard, which includes Nîmes, said it would vote no. Fournier and his administrators have lobbied for the constitution in neighborhoods throughout the city, which suffers from more than 15 percent unemployment and where both the Communist Party and the National Front are strong. In some of its tough suburbs, unemployment is as high as 40 percent.
One of the challenges Fournier faces in selling the constitution is that it promises nothing tangible and immediate. "I get asked all the time, 'What's in this for France?"' he said in an interview in his office. "The problem is that I can't say to the unemployed worker, 'If you vote for the constitution, you will get a job.' I would be lying. I tell them this is a vision for the long-term, for their children and grandchildren."
Patrice Couderc, secretary general of the CFDT union of the Gard region, added another angle: "Our politicians have done a great job of blaming the European Union when things go bad, but never praising it when its money helps build a bridge or a hospital, when it imposes an improvement in working conditions or equal rights for women. The worker, the person in the street, doesn't understand the debate of the elite."
