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France Rejects European Constitution
A voter picks up "yes" and "no" ballots at a polling station in Nice in southern France. Turnout for the referendum on a European constitution was high, as was the margin of defeat for a measure supported by the nation's governing elite.
(By Eric Gaillard -- Reuters)
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Since then, many French political leaders -- including Chirac -- have pushed for a more integrated Europe as a political and economic counterweight to the United States and China. Former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing helped draft the proposed constitution and lobbied for its passage, a stance shared by most French political leaders as well as the business and media elite.
But dissatisfaction has bubbled under the surface in France and in other European countries that have been plagued for years by high unemployment and uncertainty over who should belong in the European club.
Many French voters who opposed the constitution said they were angry that they had not been given a chance to vote on E.U. expansion from 15 to 25 members last year, pulling in most of Eastern Europe. The prospect that Europe's boundaries might be extended even further -- to Muslim Turkey and impoverished Ukraine -- has also unsettled many people in France.
"I voted no out of a concern for democracy," said Gilles Noeul, 28, an engineer who attended an opposition victory rally Sunday night in Paris. "For me, the decisions should not be made by Europe, but by each nation. I want France to make decisions for herself."
Economic anxieties played a big role in the referendum campaign. With France mired in double-digit unemployment rates, opponents said they worried that the constitution would enable low-wage workers from Eastern Europe to migrate to France and compete for scarce jobs. Others complained that the constitution increased the odds that French taxpayers would have to send more money to Brussels, which would in turn funnel it to poorer E.U. members.
Fatouma Diallo, 19, a nursing student in Paris, said she and many of her friends fretted that their job prospects would worsen under a stronger E.U. "They are already taking money from our paychecks," she said. "These changes are going to affect my generation more than others."
Even some supporters of the constitution acknowledged that the leaders of their side had failed to make a strong enough case.
Michel Dumont, a deputy mayor in Paris who favored approval of the referendum, said France had waited too long to wrestle with the question of what its proper place in Europe should be.
"It's the first time in many years that we've had a real debate on this question," Dumont said. "For the first time, really, people are confronted with this profound question on the future of Europe."
Other French elected leaders who had pushed for approval of the constitution said they were sobered by the results but pledged to adhere to the popular will.
"It was an occasion for a big debate for Europe, and the majority of French people said no," said Nicolas Sarkozy, chairman of the ruling party, the Union for a Popular Movement, and a Chirac rival who plans to run for president in 2007. "I regret that the project of the E.U. coalition can no longer stay the way we would like it to go."
Special correspondent Erika Lorentzsen contributed to this report.
