Walker's World: France's Turkish Problem

[Nakharar]

Walker's World: France's Turkish problem

 

 

By Martin Walker

UPI Editor

 

 

Washington, DC, Mar. 22 (UPI) -- One swallow may not make a summer, but two opinion polls make a trend. And French voters have now twice in a week recorded a small majority against the new European Union constitution, which faces a referendum in France on May 29.

 

Only a month ago, the opinion pills were recording a solid 60:40 "Yes" vote. The French Socialists had gone through a tough internal debate and narrowly voted to support the constitution even though its member were worried about its economic clauses being too "liberal" (by which the French mean Anglo-Saxon, Reagan and Thatcher-style raw capitalism).

 

But suddenly the mood has soured, and opinion has shifted. There seem to be three main reasons for this. The first is irritation with President Jacques Chirac and with Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. The government last week caved in to massed demonstrations by 600,000 railway and postal workers and teachers protesting for higher wages and against labor market reforms. Widespread strikes crippled air and rail traffic, just as the International Olympics Committee was in Paris to assess the city's bid for the 2012 Olympics.

 

The second reason is a broader disgust with the French political class after yet another round of corruption trials. Gerard Longuet, a former industry minister and leader of Chirac's old party is charged with sharing in a $40 million kickback scheme after the award of a $2 billion school building contract. The case splatters yet more mud over Chirac, who remains immune from criminal charges while serving as president. But a lot of old mud still sticks to Chirac from the case of Alain Juppe, his former prime minister. Juppe was barred from public life for 18 months for his part in a previous corruption case, concerning illegal campaign contributions while Chirac was mayor of Paris.

 

The third reason for the shift in opinion has been the success the "No" campaign has had in making the referendum on the Constitution a referendum on Turkey's application to join the EU. The prospect of another 75 million low-wage Turkish Muslims joining the EU is not popular in a France where unemployment is over 10 percent, and where an estimated 7 million Muslim immigrants from North Africa have heightened ethnic tensions.

 

The latest poll was published in Monday's Figaro and showed 52 percent of French voters opposed to the European Constitution. In what looks like a sign of panic, French Socialist leader François Hollande has threatened sanctions against members of his party campaigning for a "No" vote. Other political figures are insisting that President Chirac start campaigning more strongly for a "Yes" vote - although some fear that Chirac's unpopularity could provoke a backlash.

 

A French "No" to the EU's draft new constitution would be devastating. A "No" by a new member state like Poland could be met by demanding the Poles vote again, as the Danes and Irish were told they must after voting "No" in previous EU referendums. And a "No" by a known Euroskeptic country like Britain would be serious but not necessarily lethal for the new Constitution.

 

But France is different. France is one of the original six founding members of the European Community at the 1957 treaty of Rome, and the whole European project stemmed from an original vision by Frenchmen Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman. But with the economies of both Germany and Britain significantly larger than that of France, and with an enlarged EU of 25 nations refusing the traditional French claim on Europe's leadership, the EU is no longer working quite so well for France. And with the latest figures for youth unemployment showing 23 percent of those under 25 out of work, France is not working so well either.

 

Hence the doubts among the French public, and also the increasing demands by French leaders for "concessions" from the EU Commission in Brussels. France this week managed to get the rules on budget deficits relaxed for members of the euro currency, and last week blocked a new agreement for a single EU market in services - defensive measures spurred by French fears of being undercut by low-paid workers from new EU members like Poland, or from Turkey in the future.

 

Angered by such French demands, usually linked to the need for a "Yes" vote in the referendum, the president of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso has now launched a scathing attack on the French political classes as a whole for allowing public opinion to become skeptical of Europe. It was not Europe's fault, Barroso said, that French voters had been sidetracked by issues like Turkey.

 

"If there is confusion in French public opinion, it is not our fault," Mr. Barroso said. "I cannot accept the idea that because there is a referendum in one country, the commission cannot continue with our own work program. The French public has its concerns, but at the same time there are other states in the EU. We are not only having a French referendum, there is going to be a Dutch referendum, a Danish referendum, and next year one in England."

 

The constitution was drafted by a team led by former French President Valery Giscrad d'Estaing, and has now been agreed upon by all the 25 EU member governments. But the ratification by referendum is proving tricky. The constitution is supposedly required to streamline decision-making in the enlarged EU of 25, but critics say its commitment to a single EU foreign and security policy, and the EU's creeping erosion of national sovereignty in economic and social affairs, is leading to a federal superstate.

 

Until this week, most EU-watchers reckoned that the most likely "No" vote would probably come from Britain, with some doubts whether the Danes, Dutch, Czechs and Poles might join them. But the evidence of French disaffection, with just 50 days before the French referendum, has underlined the degree to which the once purely British disease of Euro-skepticism has now spread more widely through mainland Europe.

 

And lurking behind that prospect of a French rejection is the planned campaign of France's "No" camp, to put the face of Turkey's new Premier Reccip Erdogan onto their posters as the symbol of their opposition to Turkish membership in the EU. A French "No" would be a very serious setback for Europe. Making Turks and Muslims the scapegoat of France's disaffection could have far more serious consequences for an EU with a growing Islamic population at home, and the whole Middle East just across the Mediterranean.