Here’s the latest installment of my ongoing coverage of the EU Constitution referendum campaign in France, with one week to go before the vote on May 29, with the following topics:
- the “oui” camp worries as polls favor “non” again
- “Plan B”. “Plan C”. What comes after?
- foreign interventions
See the links to previous diaries just below the fold.
Disclaimer: I am fervently in favor of the “oui”, and I don’t apologise for any bias that comes through. I am also part of those French elites whose arrogance is the cause for a good chunk of the “non” vote. You’ve been warned!
Previous diaries:
France Votes (V). 10 years of Chirac and the French model
Votes on EU Constitution (IV). Democracy in Action.
EU Constitution – France Votes. (Diary III). What if it’s No?
European Constitution – France votes soon. Diary II
France Votes on EU Constitution (I)
See also Welshman’s Jerome a Paris is killing me soflt with his words diary, where many of these issues are also discussed.
Here we go:
the “oui” camp panics as polls favor “non” again
10 days ago, the “oui” camp thought that the worst part was done when the “oui” came back in the lead after several weeks of uniformly negative polls giving a majority of “non”. They thought that the campaign was paying off and that the French, after having expressed their annoyance with the politicians, was coming round to being more reasonable and doing the right thing. So the news that the “non” is now back in the lead has come as a shock to many, and a sign that the discontent is even deeper than expected.
(In the graph above the fold, the side bars show preferences by party affiliation: PC= Communist Party, PS= Socialists, Verts = Greens, UDF = center-right pro-European party, UMP = Chirac’s main right-wing (gaullist) party, , MNR+FN = extreme right-wing, last line = independents)
The “non” has also been helped by a number of things in recent news:
- as the most recent economic statistics have shown, the economic situation in France is not great (I will write in greater detail about this in another post soon). Unemployment is stubbornly high, and hopes that decent growth could finally dent this have now been shot down by the most recent numbers, which show a slow down;
- the great Pentecoast Monday Fuck up has also not helped. Two years ago, after the heatwave that killed 15,000 people, mostly elderly people, the government set up a plan to reinforce the care for the elderly and handicapped, and they decided to pay for this plan with a “day of solidarity”, i.e. a public holiday would be scrapped, people would work, and a new 0.3% tax on payrolls would be paid by companies. They decided that this Monday would be it, but they also let companies choose, if they wanted, to take another day off or organise themselves otherwise. People have not been happy to give up a holiday (especially one that provides for a nice 3-day week-end in May), they are not happy that only employees pay for “solidarity”, and additional confusion has been created by individual decisions by companies, including public ones, to keep the day a holiday (among others, the SNCF, the train monopoly, notorious for its strikes, where they decided to keep the day a holiday, but to make everybody work an additional 2 minutes per day…). The unions called for a day of strikes in many industries, which created additional confusion on the legal side as it was not clear how pay could be docked from people on strike as this was a day they are not supposed to be paid anyway… anyway, the whole debate shone light on the incompetence of the government, the stagnating incomes of workers, and the generally tense social situation in the country, adding reasons to vote against the government by proxy;
- there has been an additional “polémique” (as we called acrimonious debate over here) about whether the media favor the “oui” camp too blatantly. It’s hard to tell, and the “oui” side was complaining of the opposite a few weeks back. The following grapgh from Le Monde seems to suggest that both were right, and that what’s in the news skews the coverage, but that works both ways.
Expect the losing side to complain after the vote…
“Plan B”. “plan C”. What comes after?
But one of the biggest stories of the week has been the debate about whether there is a “plan B”. That designates what would happen if the “non” won. The “non” side has been saying that the “non” vote is not against Europe, and quite the contrary, would allow to restart negotiations on a saner basis, with everything on the table and not just what faceless Brussels bureaucrats decided. In the meantime, Europe would keep on chugging along as it does today. The “oui” side has sounded a catastrophist note, saying that a “non” vote would throw Europe in disarray and block everything, and that there is no plan for any renegotiation of the treaty, as the negotiation was done in the best of circumstances and cannot be expected to start again with as much goodwill after France has snubbed everybody else.
So Jacques Delors (the President of the EU Commission in 1985-95 and a French Socialist) saying that there was a plan B (he said that negotiations would certianly start again if the “non” won, but that they would be hard and unlikely to succed) were seized upon with glee by the “non” camp. Delors spoke again to explain that he had been misunderstood, but the information did strike a blow for the “non”.
Today, Laurent Fabius, formerly a centrist Socialist (and a former Prime Minister in 1984-86 and lately minister of the economy in 2001-02) and now one of the main campaigners for the “non” speaks in an interview with Le Monde of a “plan C” of the “oui” wins, i.e. all the unpopular measures that the current right wing government has delayed for fear of the reaction in the referendum and which will come just after the vote, if the “oui” wins. This is certain to create a new “polémique” (as the interview just came out a few hours ago, I cannot yet provide any reactions)
Foreign interventions
Another interesting aspect of this campaign, which is altogether a very interesting one (very intense, very much focused on the actual issues at hand, with a very strong participation of the population and permanent debate within families, at work and everywhere else – politicians and journalists have been amazed by the success of their campaign meetings and special shows on the topic) is the quasi daily presence of foreign politicians in the campaign.
Major figures form many countries (such as the President of Poland, the German Chancellor, former Czech President Vaclav Havel, and senior politicians from the main socialist and right wing parties of many countries) have come to participate to the campaign and to address the French people directly. It usually takes the form of interventions during the camapign meetings of their sister parties (The Spanish Prime Minister speaking at the main “oui” campagin meeting of the French socialists, for instance) or op-eds in the press. Almost all are urging the French to vote “oui” and telling them/us how important this vote is.
A notable absence, naturally, is that of the British politicians, who are keeping pretty much silent in this debate, I imagine for fear of their opinion being rebroadcasted back at home…
Altogether, the situation is very uncertain. The “non” is currently in the lead in the polls, but barely (51 to 53%); the campaign is in full swing and it is the main subject in the news and everyday conversations anywhere. whatever the result, it will have been a healthy exercise in democracy.