Chirac, Juppe use Kohl visit to portray the left as a threat to France's status in the EU

FLANKED by French and European flags and in the presence of his main European ally, the German Chancellor, Mr Kohl. President Chirac has finally devoted a campaign speech to Europe.

France will keep its European commitments," he said on Tuesday night, just five days before the first round of legislative elections. "She will keep them with lucidity and with pragmatism I will see to it."

Without naming the left wing opposition - which is fighting a close race for the parliamentary majority and the Prime Minister's office - Mr Chirac portrayed it as a threat to Europe: "How can we imagine that all that has been done in the past 40 years should be put into question or put on hold without our country suffering terrible damage?" he asked.

Then Mr Chirac asked the French to vote centre right for the sake of their influence in Europe.

"Let us not forget that [France] cannot defend its interests unless it is capable of speaking with a single voice, with a strong voice."

In case anyone misunderstood, the Prime Minister, Mr Alain Juppe, went on television a few minutes later to spell out the President's message: "It means that whatever happens, if the Socialist Party and the Communist Party win, we would inevitably have a crisis in Europe."

Nonsense, countered the Socialist leader, Mr Lionel Jospin. "It is obvious that in the event of cohabitation, France would speak with one voice in Europe," he asserted. "Cohabitation" is the French term for government by a president and prime minister of different political persuasions.

The ruling centre right, it seems, has just realised that the left could win the May 25th and June 1st elections and that if it does, a dispute over France's European policy would poison "cohabitation".

For the President to threaten crisis in Europe if the left wins was nothing short of political blackmail, the newspaper Liberation said.

Not without irony, the French press noted that when he "cohabited" as prime minister from 1986 until 1988, Mr Chirac was the reluctant European.

Abandoning his own presidential campaign pledge to hold a referendum on EMU, Mr Chirac did not become an unconditional supporter of the Maastricht Treaty until October 1995, five months after his election.

As if he had foreseen the President's scare tactics, Mr Jospin has repeated all week that he envisages no difficulties on European policy if he becomes prime minister.

The right agreed with three of the four conditions his party - in tandem with the Communists - has posed for compliance with EMU criteria: a political counter weight to the European Central Bank; Spain and Italy to be among the first wave of countries to join EMU, and a decision to prevent the euro being overvalued against the dollar and yen.

That leaves the stability pact, which will impose fines on governments that overindulge in deficit spending after EMU. The Socialists want to replace it with a "pact of solidarity and growth".

"The stability pact adds conditions which are not in the Maastricht Treaty," Mr Jospin told Le Monde.

"It is super Maastricht and it's a concession that the French government made absurdly to the Germans So I have no reason to feel committed to it."

Mr Chirac and Dr Kohl who dined together in Paris to prepare for tomorrow's Noordwijk summit in the Netherlands - firmly rejected Mr Jospin's call for a review of the pact that was concluded in Dublin last December.

Dr Kohl said he did not see why the pact should be reexamined, but added that he did not want to interfere in French domestic politics.

"France has made commitments," Mr Chirac said. "None of our partners would accept or understand if we did not keep them."

The election campaign has nonetheless forced the government to advocate a more assertive social policy in Europe.

The left is tapping a deep vein of dissatisfaction in condemning what it sees as the liberal, monetarist bias of the Maastricht Treaty.

A study conducted by the outgoing French parliament concluded that public opinion had the feeling that the single market was powerless to resolve the major problems of massive unemployment and growing division between rich and poor.