French Vote on EU Constitution
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French chanson is rightly renowned for finding fitting words and melodies to sing the essential feelings of human life. „Non je ne regrette rien“, sang Edith Piaf: No, I regret nothing!, and this might be a leitmotif of Non-voters in France when they thin k of the 29th may 2005 when they succee ded in gaining a majority of 54% and blocking the ratification of the European Constitution, for France, and –together with the Netherlands– for the rest of the European Union. The days after, 54% of interviewed Frenchmen confirmed this non, je ne regrette rien, considering themselves satisfied with the NON decision, and ony 39% were dissatisfied. (Eurobarometer 6/2005, par 3.1) But it is also true that many of them may now already have started to ask themselves, in the words of another icon of French chanson, Gilbert Becaud : „E t maintenant, que vais je faire ?“, And now, what shall I do ? This question is not only asked by them, the parties and other political movements which battled for the Non. it is also asked by political leaders who had defended the Oui / Yes, and who find themselves, as in the Socialist Party, with a majority of members who voted Non, or in the government, which had from its top downwards, defended the Yes, and which now faces an electorate wh ich disavowed it resoundingly, and which expects its opposing vote to be heard and to find expression in politics. But „Que vais je faire?“, this question is also asked beyond the borders of France, in other European capitals and political movements, and in Brussels, the EU's capital. And naturally, the European Union's friends all over the world, also in the United States, are asking what the significance is, of this NON, and what France and what Europe, will do in the months after this disavowal of offi cial French european policy, by its own people. And opinions vary widely. Listen for instance to prof. Andrew Moravscik, a colleague of ours at Princeton, who says that the 29th May has been the „last gasp of idealistic European federalism, born in the mi d-1940, which aimed at establishing a United States of Europe“, but which leaves intact the essential stability and legitimacy of the European Union as it has developed in the last five and a half decades ? Is it this? Or is it something even worse, like „the beginning of the end of the EU“. Everybody is more or less asking the same kind of questions, and this is what I myself will also do. The lecture will be organized around four questions: - Volatile or structural, is the French NON here to stay and what does it mean ? - What consequences for French European policy ? - What consequences for the European Union’s further development ? - Will it have been „worth it“ for the NON -voters ? 1 The French vote of 29 May, volatile or structural ? The failed referendum of 29 May 2005 In fact why attach much attention to the vote of the 29th May ? Is the popular Non-majority not highly volatile ? Did the political establishment not solidly and massively support further European integration via the constitution ? 1 Did the French not have a generally positive attitude which continues to underpin further integration in the EU ? And as for the neighbors, France’s vote is not so different from attitudes elsewhere, for instance in the Netherlands, as to make it a radical outsider. So together with the others, may it not already on the short term change its attitude ? This would also fit with the idea that what expressed itself on 29 May was primarily the eternal French « esprit de barricade », turned against a political establis hment considered increasingly uncapable and untrustworthy (this confirmed by the force of prior abstention and by the strong role of Ras -le -bol sentiments for the vote - 2nd strongest motive given in the after -the-vote poll), but without any particular dis like towards further progress of integration, a spirit of which the constitution became the innocent victim but which would not persist if new and more convincing political elites came to power. An additional argument giving comfort to this interpretation, concerns the strongest factor of the Non -front: the members of the biggest opposition party, the PS, and more specifically Socialist dignitary Laurent Fabius, former finance minister and prime minister of France and respected as one of the most serious and capable politicians of the PS. It was his unexpected turn towards the Non in the runup to ratification, in late summer 2004, which gave a seriousness and credibility to this option within the PS and probably also for centrist oriented parts of the population, which it would not have had without him. One may thus maintain that it was just the appearance of Monsieur Fabius, a passing phenomenon, which permitted the NON to collect the decisive additional 6 percent points which it lacked 13 years earlier in the battle against the Treaty of Maastricht. Before looking specifically at France , it is worth to step back for a moment and try to understand why all Europeans may have had a hard time to agree to the constitutional treaty in spring 2005. After all, the se are extraordinarily difficult and challenging times in which the European Union has undertaken the adventure of giving itself a Constitution. In integration deepening came the introduction of the common currency from 1999, and further integration of oth er important national policies as in immigration. At the same time European parliamentary power increased and inched the Union further forward, in the direction of a parliamentary democracy. In a contradictory movement, the national executives‘ place in Eu ropean decision making equally increased to the detriment of the European Commission. Along with this –and not well ordered after it, as originally intended - came the biggest and most challenging enlargement of all EU history, consummated by the accession of 10 more member states in 2004 which could not be more different from incumbent Member states of the old Union. This enormous movement forward stretches the financial and institutional resources of the Union to the point where their increase would be neeeded just to preserve the level of Union services and transfers to every one of the incumbent Member states. But it comes together with a reduction of economc growth and an effort of fiscal consolication which renders any increase of the Union’s share in national public budgets impossible. And the liberalising logic of European integration, together with its competency for foreign trade policy and management, makes it the principal institutional transmitter of globalisation into the national societies of the EU and of its challenges to their established social systems. Nobody said that this conjunction of challenges would be easy to master, and nobody should be astonished that the peoples of the EU express mixed sentiments facing them. In this general context the French reaction, as that of other peoples, certainly already assumes a structural character. Nevertheless, the French people have reacted in a specially radical way. And turning to them now, the volatility hypothesis appears is less convincing. And neither is 1 has not a massive majority of French parliament and senat voted for the OUI when the referendum w as decided on, together with the government, and the leaderships of the largest political parties of the country ? 2 the idea that the vote had more to do with domestic policy vexations than with European issues. To prove this, let us just look at some of the most interesting points which public opinion research had to contribute to our analysis of the 29th May. As to volatility, tendencies run in the same direction since a long time: • The NON has not inexplicably changed its adherents, no, it has developed its support in logical manner. The Maastricht-NONs, in their large majority from rural regions and wo rkers and small employees, have, as for them, persisted in their negative vote. Since Maastricht, it mainly progressed among those who had then still either in their majority voted YES or abstained themselves: the middle classes, the employees, the urban dwellers, and the young (between 18 and 34). Even the farmers have for the first time voted against Europe, in their majority. • Consistent with this, unemployment and precarity have been on the rise for over twenty years. None of the political strategies have accomplished something against these plights, in spite of certain ponctual successes, as in the shortening of the working week to 35 hours. • In this same period, the trust in politicians and political concepts has continuously receded, over the Sociali st, and the Conservative periods of the last two decades, because of one overriding concern, that unemployment was not reduced by politics, not by national and not by European institutions. There is a clearly structural logic in these developments which has affected voters‘ attitude on 29th May. Did Europe come in?2 For the French referendum, especially compared with the Dutch and the Spanish one, it certainly did: after an intense campaign, the French were –and considered themselves – especially well in formed on the EU and the issue was central to their vote. Where did European integration come in ? Thinking back of the 1950ies, when in spite of many hesitations France participated in the creation of the European communities, this happened because of th e promise of integration to France: protect its social system and its employment, by softening the negative effects of the unescapable liberalization and internationalization of the French economy; render the process more controlable, give more weight to F rench concerns by uniting the European voices in commercial negotiations, compensate the losers of liberalisation by regional help, agricultural subsidies and social fonds.