French Poll a Blow to Hopes for European Constitution
by David Rennie in Brussels

Europe's political establishment was sent reeling yesterday by the first opinion poll to suggest that French voters will reject the draft European constitution and deal the treaty a fatal blow.

According to the CSA institute poll, 51 per cent of the French would vote against the constitution and 49 per cent for. The poll marked a 14-point slump for the Yes camp since the last survey three weeks ago.

A rejection from France would plunge the European Union into a political crisis whose outcome is impossible to predict.

In theory, all 25 EU members must ratify the constitution, or the document is doomed. In practice, a Czech or Polish No vote could probably be fudged.

But the consensus in Brussels is that a No vote from France would be a death sentence for the treaty. The crisis is already leading to poisonous mutual finger-pointing between Paris and the European Commission in Brussels over who is to blame for the decline in French enthusiasm for the European project.

The commission's president, Jose Manuel Barroso, has denounced the charged atmosphere in France as "giving excuses to europhobes and eurosceptics". Other European governments with their own referenda to fight over the next two years have watched, with dismay, Mr Chirac's sudden willingness to pick fights over Europe and confront Brussels.

One British politician who follows French politics closely expressed irritation at Mr Chirac's "cynicism" over Europe, as well as his failure to develop a strategy for winning the referendum on May 29. He expressed equal gloom at the federalist rhetoric of other leaders in the Yes camp, notably the ex-president Giscard d'Estaing, touring the country assuring voters that the treaty is the founding political charter of a new Europe.

"The French haven't got their act together yet," the British observer complained. "They have seemed more concerned with getting the 2012 Olympics than getting a Yes vote in this referendum. Between Giscard's romanticised overselling of the constitution treaty, and Chirac's continual cynicism and underperformance, there is a very serious danger that France could pull this whole thing down."

The Yes campaign - led by a fractious coalition of Centre Left and Right leaders - has been dogged by infighting, with some leaders spending as much time warring with rivals in their parties as campaigning for the constitution. The No camp has benefited, above all, from a fresh wave of insecurity and protectionism sweeping France provoked by an EU directive designed to reduce red tape for professionals moving around the EU. Tens of thousands have taken to the French streets to denounce the directive.

To British eyes, the "Bolkestein directive", named after a Dutch former commissioner, is uncontroversial. Its main sticking point, for the French, is a clause that allows professionals, such as Polish architects or British ski-instructors, to move on a temporary contract to another EU country and, initially at least, follow their home country's regulations and labour laws.

But to many French workers, the prospect of thousands of low-paid, low-taxed and lightly regulated Czechs and Poles setting up in competition is proof that the EU has been hijacked by "Anglo-Saxon" free-marketeers and their acolytes from Eastern Europe. The No camp has watched its support surge as it attacked the directive.

The Yes camp reacted with near-panic. Mr Chirac even called the commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso, to tell him that the directive was "unacceptable" and demand that it should be "started again from scratch."
The Daily Telegraph, 19th March 2005

Europe's Bogus Benefits
Roger Helmer MEP (Con) Lutterworth, Leics

SIR - The benefits of EU membership claimed by Roger Liddle (report, Mar 5), of freedom, security and economic strength, cannot sustain a moment's critical analysis.

Under the EU arrest warrant, British citizens can now be arrested on the whim of a foreign magistrate in Greece or Slovenia. The Government's Draconian and illiberal house- arrest proposals are a direct consequence of the European Convention on Human Rights. That's freedom? Security?

Brussels's proposals for independent defence structures outside Nato, its adversarial approach to America, its Galileo GPS (with China as a partner), are undermining the transatlantic relationship on which our security has depended for decades, and continues to depend.

But Liddle's most preposterous claim is "economic strength". The Bundesbank has said "it can find no benefit for German industry" in the single market.

Commentators from Peter Mandelson to the European Commission itself have highlighted the costs of EU regulation. The hubristic "Lisbon process" promising "the most competitive knowledge based economy in the world" by 2010, lies in ruins.

The French and German economies are edging from failure to disaster, with the euro a key contributory factor. German unemployment is at levels not seen since Weimar. That's economic strength?

Liddle perfectly illustrates the folly of EU propaganda, flying in the face of reality and common sense.
Letters to the Editor, The Daily Telegraph, 10th March 2005

PHILLIP DAY'S COMMENT: For those unfamiliar with the main infringements of freedom the EU espouses, please take the brief tour on our book Ten Minutes to Midnight. Credence also has a PAL video documentary on the subject, entitled The Real Face of the European Union.
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