Quotes of the Day

In the shadow of the last blast furnace in Hayange, a declining French steel town near the border with Luxembourg and Germany, union and communist activists gathered in the local sports hall one recent night to plot their campaign against the proposed European Union constitution. They had put up posters in the windows of the drab stucco building advocating a europe of peace, but — as in thousands of similar meetings throughout France over the past few months — the spirit was more of revolution. For people like Jacques Maréchal, who teaches at a drug-abuse center and organized the meeting, the constitution is a direct threat to France's cherished traditions of social solidarity, workers' rights and welfare provision. He thinks it falls uniquely to him and his compatriots to bring the document down in this Sunday's referendum. "We didn't wait for the others in 1789 and we shouldn't now," says Maréchal, 42, lean, friendly and intense. "A French non could unleash liberating energy for all Europeans. Through this wall of money, we will make a passage for a society that's more for the people."

It's a long way from the grit of Hayange to the gilt of the Elysée Palace in Paris, yet President Jacques Chirac too has invoked the French Revolution — to sell the constitution to his countrymen, though, not to tear it down. The document is "a daughter of 1789," he told an audience of 6.5 million during a televised pitch from the tapestry-bedecked antechamber of his Elysée office earlier this month, and they should rally behind it because "the French, more than others, have good reason to be proud that these values will from now on be the general rule [in Europe]."

It's ironic, maybe even quaint, that people on both sides of the constitutional debate should cite the French Revolution to bolster their case. Back in 1789, France was in the vanguard of a democratic movement that swept away the old order across the Continent. But these days, France is more likely to be bringing up the rear rather than leading the charge for radical change. The process of European integration was launched as a fundamentally French project, and for most of the last 50 years French personalities, ideas and influence dominated it. But now, the French are seen by many not as a model nation but an obstacle to reform. France has led the fight to preserve the E.U.'s bloated and inequitable agricultural subsidies, penalize Central Europe's embrace of low corporate taxes, and loosen the reins on deficit spending. Having been accustomed to an E.U. that in many ways was France writ large, the country is struggling to adapt to a much larger union in which Paris has a harder time calling the shots.

Instead of embracing change with the vigor and élan that has been their historical trademark, many French seem afraid and petulant as they cling to a heroic image of their country that no longer matches reality. "There's no trust in the future, no capacity for risk taking," says Bernard Spitz, founder of the center-left think tank In Real Time and co-editor of a 2004 compendium of proposed reforms entitled State of Urgency. "The French just aren't happy about the way the world turns right now, and the referendum gives them a chance to say no to many things: to Turkey in the E.U., to Chirac, to enlargement, to offshoring of jobs, to globalization."

Many French might think that by rejecting the constitution they can make all these things just go away. It won't happen. For the past 20 years, France has suffered from chronic unemployment, currently at 10.2%. While the economy grew 2.5% last year — against an E.U. average of 2.4% — that still hasn't generated enough jobs. For a generation, budget deficits have become almost as common as labor strikes. And French productivity per employee increased at just half the rate of the rest of the world between 1995 and 2003, according to a report released last week by the Conference Board, a business-oriented research institute in New York City. If the French want to keep their social model intact, they'll have to figure out a way to pay for it. "The perception people have of the future — Will our children's lives be better or worse than ours? — is at a low," says Frenchman Pascal Lamy, the former European Trade Commissioner who's expected to take over as president of the World Trade Organization (wto) later this year. "People feel they have to work more to make less." It's largely that sense of malaise that could drive a majority of French voters to scupper the European constitution on Sunday, bringing the E.U.'s drive toward "ever closer union" to a grinding halt.

The debate has centered mainly on whether the constitution is or isn't a kind of Trojan horse by which the dreaded "Anglo-Saxon liberalism" — i.e., unfettered free-market capitalism — will be given free rein in France, gnawing at such hard-won social gains as the 35-hour workweek, well-funded public services and strong protection against layoffs. On the far left, Marie-George Buffet, national secretary of the French Communist Party, said that bringing the constitution down "will be an extraordinary signal to all the world's peoples that the wto and Bush will no longer reign as their masters." On the far right, National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen has said a yes vote would be tantamount to "capitulation." Laurent Fabius, a former Socialist Prime Minister who has thrown in his lot with the no camp, says the constitution would lead to "a diluted Europe with ever more member states, ever lower wages and benefits and an ever weaker capacity for decision making."

The controversy has transported the French: guides to the constitution have become best sellers, radio discussions drone on ad nauseum about the pros and cons of the document, and a poll last week revealed that 83% of French people say they've discussed the referendum at home or at work this month. The yes and no sides have been seesawing in the polls, but surveys released last week put no on top at 53%. The vote could still go either way.

Despite the gripes of the no campaign, the constitution does nothing new to hammer home the power of the market in the E.U. Its main intent is to streamline the Union's decision-making processes now that it has 25 members. National governments will elect a European Council President, and there will be a new post of European Foreign Minister. The size of the European Commission will be reduced, more policies will be decided by majority voting rather than unanimity, and more power will be given to the European Parliament. The constitution does, however, restate various economic principles on which the national governments of all member states (including France) have already agreed: restrictions on state aid to businesses, guarantees for the free flow of capital and the European Central Bank's mandate to preserve price stability. This is all pretty standard stuff, but the French public never had the chance to vote on it. Now that they do, they may say, "No way."

That is certainly the view of the 100-odd people who gathered last month before the peeling walls of the abandoned Moulinex factory in Cormelles-le-Royal, outside Caen in Normandy. Firebrand Socialist Henri Emmanuelli was on hand to push for a no. "I would have hoped that it would be the aim of Europe to protect jobs; in the constitution, I see it's the opposite," he said, to rousing applause. Almost 3,000 people worked in the complex making kitchen appliances until it was bought by a new owner and then closed in 2001, sparking a fierce union battle. "We feel so manipulated," says Franz Lahaye-Granger, 47, who lost his job as a designer. He and his colleagues don't see why they should become victims of global market forces. And what if it simply doesn't pay to make microwave ovens in France when they can be made in China for a fraction of the cost? "It's time for the Chinese workers to get organized," he says. In the meantime: "We need to defend ourselves by saying no to this liberal constitution."

For some, that kind of argument is dangerously wrong-headed. Jean-Michel Fourgous, a member of Chirac's Union for a Popular Movement (ump) in the National Assembly, blames the intermittent Socialist governments since 1981 for promoting the "unbearable idea that in the world's fourth biggest economy, business is the enemy." But he's no softer on his party colleague Chirac, whom he calls "the most antiliberal leader in Europe." Fourgous says the President has done nothing to address France's real problem: "A government that's been hijacked by an intellectually brilliant élite that's dangerously ignorant about the economy." Even in the current conservative government, Fourgous says, 80% of ministerial cabinet positions are occupied by people who've never worked in the private sector. Those who have, he says, "are tolerated, but shoved into subaltern posts. We have nobody like Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher here. The French have to learn that the private sector isn't the enemy. It's not a question of socialism or liberalism; it's realism."

Nicolas Sarkozy, ump president and a likely presidential candidate in 2007, thinks there's political capital to be made from such realism. At a U.S.-style political revival meeting with dancing girls and a phalanx of government ministers in Paris earlier this month, Sarkozy came out swinging against any romantic attachment to the French model. "The best social model is one that gives work to everyone," he told an audience of 4,000 at the Palais des Sports. "That's no longer ours." Sarkozy's message isn't that France should change Europe, but that Europe should change France.

The change most French seem to want is one of government. A poll released last week showed that Chirac's approval rating has plummeted to 39%, and that of his Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, to 21%. Chirac's opposition to the Iraq war two years ago won him plaudits at home, but since then he's been unable to connect with the French people — and some think he's lost his touch. "If anyone had rationally looked at when was the best time to hold a referendum like this, right now we'd be in the red zone," says Lamy. And business leaders are so radioactive at the moment that few are speaking out to defend Chirac's push for a yes. "It would just add fuel to the fire," says one big-company ceo, who asked not be identified.

And what better proof of France's malaise than a new willingness to re-examine the British example. It has long been a staple of political wisdom that Britain's low level of job protection and shopkeeper's mentality were anathema to France. But a solid record of high growth and low unemployment across the Channel is changing some minds. The left-leaning weekly Nouvel Observateur recently ran a seven-page section under the title: why the English are better than us, which detailed how, by making hiring and firing easier and passing measures to get people off welfare and into jobs, Britain is committed to full employment. The pieces noted, as Chirac often has, that many of Britain's practices would be unacceptable in France.

Were it to hazard a glance, France might learn a thing or two from the east as well. Though countries like Poland and Slovakia struggle with higher unemployment rates than France, they're hardly looking to Paris for solutions. Instead, they're putting their hopes in lower corporate taxes that have helped contribute to a growth rate among the E.U.'s 10 new members that is twice that in the West. "The last time France was a model for European political culture was sometime in the 19th century," says Alexandr Vondra, a foreign-policy analyst in Prague and former adviser to ex-Czech President Vaclav Havel. "That may also be the reason the outcome of the referendum is uncertain. The French are realizing their continuing loss of influence. If Europe is to stand the test of global competition, it has to adopt elements of the Anglo-Saxon model."

France's relations with the Eastern and Central Europeans have been under strain since Chirac's condescending judgment in 2003 that in backing the U.S. and Britain on Iraq, the new members had "missed a good opportunity to keep quiet." Nobody harps on about the insult, but it won't be quickly forgotten. True, France was in the vanguard of much of the world's resistance to the invasion of Iraq, but as Ivo Samson of the Slovak Foreign Policy Association in Bratislava points out, the conflict also "showed that France doesn't have the capacity to mobilize Europe for some alternative to strong transatlanticism." Samson suspects the animus directed against the constitution is partly prompted by the fear that the new E.U. will clip France's geopolitical wings. "It's a kind of defiance," he says, "because the E.U. is not heading in the direction the French had hoped. In my view, France never gave up on the dream that it will once again be the hegemonic leader it once was in Europe."

Not surprisingly, most people in the new member states think the threat the constitution allegedly poses is overblown. "Of course, the constitution is partially trying to create conditions for Europe to be more liberal," says Jiri Pehe, a political analyst and director of the Prague campus of New York University, "but it doesn't in any way destroy the European social model. It only tries to create a framework for more flexibility, which is in the interests of all member states. They all realize that they have to do it if they want to avoid bankruptcy."

In France, that realization has been slow to sink in. "The French love to see the state as a protective parent, and both left and right have been selling the idea for years," says Elie Cohen, an economist at Sciences Po in Paris. During more than two decades of consistently high unemployment, French politicians have found it more convenient to blame Brussels than to make the often painful reforms necessary to restore growth. "Europe has been permanently oversold," says Cohen. "Now many French see the E.U. as a force that doesn't just hinder the state, but actually negates it."

So, what happens if the French reject the constitution? The government is predicting dire consequences. "A France that says no will have a hard time resisting all the pressures working in the direction of excessive liberalism," Raffarin warned last week. But like other no advocates, Fabius sees an opportunity; he wants to immediately renegotiate a stripped-down treaty. At a meeting in Nancy last week with German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, Chirac slapped that idea down: "How can anyone imagine that because France says no our partners are going to say, 'Very good, let's start over?'"

For some, of course, a no will be regarded as a victory for France. And plenty of other dissatisfied Europeans, beginning perhaps with the Dutch on June 1 (see box), may follow suit, preferring the messy status quo — or another try in the distant future — to this imperfect step toward greater European integration. But if the constitution does collapse, and the E.U. embarks on another round of introverted bureaucratic noodling, Europe's reputation for fecklessness will be strengthened. "I believe that in case there was a no [in any country] it would be perceived outside Europe as a failure for Europe," E.U. Commission President José Manuel Barroso said last week. "People will say, 'Those Europeans can't even agree about a treaty.'"

There could well be turmoil in French politics, too. A no would undermine the pro-constitution Socialist Party leadership under Secretary François Hollande, and Fabius, as leader of the no faction, has burned too many bridges to unify the badly split party. And the stakes are high for Chirac as well. "Anything short of a surprisingly large yes win means the yes camp nearly lost," says an adviser to Sarkozy. "If Chirac can't convincingly win a referendum he clearly thought would be a cinch, then his political credibility will be gone."

In arguing so passionately about the E.U. constitution, France has — perhaps inadvertently — opened up a debate about itself, its ambitions and dreams, its illusions and fears. If the no camp wins, Lamy thinks it will be another short-lived episode in France's ongoing "Asterix complex" — besieged by outside forces, the wily French somehow manage to overcome the odds and win. The difference this time, though, is that the French are threatened just as much by their own resistance to change as by the perils of unfettered Anglo-Saxon liberalism. The Asterix complex "is a myth, of course, but it echoes strongly," Lamy says. "We see ourselves in a village, fighting the Romans, and thank God we're smarter than them. It's fun, and it always ends with a banquet." But will it be worth the hangover?

• JAMES GRAFF
• As the referendum looms, the French talk a lot about the constitution but not enough about themselves