Wed, Jun 01, 2005 page9

• Referendum more about ideals and vision than a constitution

  The rejection reflected the fears of many voters that the EU constitution threatened French jobs with its `neo-liberal bias' and immigration-friendly policies

  • THE GUARDIAN
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  They were arguing about it until the last possible minute. A few were still uncertain; many more had not the least doubt; some were angry.

  But called finally to decide on the EU constitution after a bitter two-month debate that has divided the nation, France's 42 million voters headed to the polls with something approaching relief.

  "I'm just glad it's all over," said Jean-Baptiste Chabron, sitting on the terrace of Le Turgot brasserie in Paris's ninth arrondissement for a post-poll beer with his two sons, both students and both voting for the first time.

  "The problem is, the constitution has had nothing to do with it; it's been a battle between visions and ideologies. People have been defending their dreams, not debating a text meant to make it easier to manage Europe. It's all been very instinctive, very emotional, not reasoned or intellectual. It's completely worn me out," he said.

  Jean-Baptiste had just voted yes. So had his son Mathieu, 18, because "I'm young, I believe in Europe, it's my future." But Cedric, 21, had plumped for the no.

  "You're so naive," he insisted, saying the treaty "stinks of money. Competition is mentioned 174 times and market 78 times; social progress appears three times. Is that really the Europe you want?"

  Though Jean-Baptiste sighed that a no vote was "a lost vote, a destructive vote, a backward-looking vote, a no-hope-vote," it has been Cedric's argument that had carried the day in the weeks leading up to the referendum.

  Thirteen consecutive polls had put the no camp ahead on as much as 56 percent of the popular vote, with the most frequently cited reasons the constitution's perceived neo-liberal, free-market bias, the damage it would do to French jobs and the protective French social system, and dislike of the center-right government.

  President Jacques Chirac knows that disaffection with him may bring down the EU constitution. He made no comment as he cast his ballot at mid-morning in Sarran in his south-western constituency with his wife, Bernadette, before travelling back to Paris for the results of a vote that will be as much a verdict on him and his deeply unpopular government as on the future of Europe.

  The big names in the no camp, including the rebel Socialist deputy leader Laurent Fabius, kept their own counsel, while in his home region of Poitou-Charente, the prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin -- likely to lose his job whatever the result -- said merely: "We are the European people, who will decide its future. The French have a responsibility ... and are assuming it with, it seems, a high level of engagement at the polls."

  At polling stations across Paris, the debate on the ground was equally strident and polarized, in contrast to TV and radio reports, which were silent; under French campaign law, no public statements likely to influence the outcome of an election may be made while voting is going on.

  "I voted no," Jean-Rene Michaud, an electrician in his mid-50s, announced bluntly and to some disapproval in the queue for the florists on rue Condorcet (it was also mothers' day in France).

  "The country's in the shit as it is, without Czechs and Bulgarians and everyone coming in. They're already here illegally, in my business. What will it be like if they can come in legally?" he said.

  Marie-Ange Lopez, a 37-year-old Spanish teacher, was resentful of the pressure she felt she had been put under.

  "I voted yes, but grudgingly," she said on her way out of the polling station at the Charles de Gaulle primary school. "I didn't want to be responsible for breaking up something that people have been building for 60 years. But I wasn't sure until I got inside; there's lots I don't agree with in this treaty and in the way Europe is developing.I feel blackmailed into voting yes, by the government and by the media."

  Across town, Jean-Philippe and Anne, an auditor and a financial analyst for a bank, said they had voted no "firmly" and that there were "an awful lot of ballot papers in the no box."

  Not that their vote would change very much, said Jean-Philippe, but "we object to the way things are going, and to being told it's the only way they can go."

  Anne expressed a commonly-held sentiment among France's electorate.

  "For once, I've been asked to give my opinion, so I'm bloody well going to give it. If we'd all been asked what we'd thought about enlargement, a Europe of 25 states, maybe it wouldn't have come to this," she said.

  Jean-Edouard Chaupitre, a trainee doctor of 26, expressed another common French objection.

  "It's just far too long and far too complex," he said.

  "I'm not the most stupid guy in France and I've tried reading it, I really have. I had to give up. Surely Europe deserves better than this?" he said.

  Coming out of the same bourgeois-bohemian polling station as Marie-Ange, he added: "I think it was probably a mistake to call a referendum on something like this, a hugely complicated and delicate compromise between 25 countries and three European institutions.

  "How can you expect people to answer just yes or no to such a document? It was inevitable that the vote would be about other things," he said.

  It was left to one of the oldest voters of the day to put the "other things" in perspective.

  Emerging from her polling station, Marie-Gilberte de Roquefeuil said she was pessimistic. "Europe is so important, and we're throwing it in the bin. We'll pay a price for it."

  "I'm 75, so it's all the same to me, but I'm voting for my grandchildren -- and I remember the occupation. We owe a debt to Europe that nowadays too few people understand," she said.
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