FRANCE: As the leader who first called for a European constitution, and the man who decided France should hold a referendum, President Jacques Chirac will need a scapegoat if the French vote No on May 29th.
If that happens, the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné reported yesterday, Chirac intends to blame Jacques Delors, the former president of the European Commission.
When Delors appeared on the cover of Le Nouvel Observateur saying (of opponents of the treaty) "They are lying to you!" the Yes vote rose in opinion polls, and Delors was a hero. Now he's in the dog house. His sin; an unguarded moment in an interview with Le Monde.
Asked whether there could be a "plan B" if France votes No, Delors said: "I must tell the truth, that there could be one." The Yes camp has made the absence of a "plan B" one of its main arguments, and Delors' quote was deemed so sensational that the second half - "but one must explain the extreme difficulty of the problem" - was deleted by exultant opponents of the treaty.
The ageing statesman back-peddled on French television the following day: "Perhaps I didn't express myself in the right political style . . . I must say things today in a simple manner: long live plan A. There is no plan B."
But the damage was done. The "plan B" is the great theological debate of the referendum campaign. "The plan B is like Heaven," writes Frédéric Pagès in Le Canard Enchaîné. "There are those who believe in it and those who don't."
The socialist leader Francois Hollande calls the "plan B" "political fiction" and "an undemocratic mystification". No one is actually claiming that a secret plan lies locked in a filing cabinet in Brussels. Unlike previous EU treaties, the constitutional treaty foresaw the possibility that "one or several member states" might encounter difficulties in ratifying the text. Declaration 30 of the final act specifies that if at least 20 of Europe's 25 countries have ratified the treaty by November 1st 2006, the Council will discuss the question.
A European summit 18 months down the road hardly seems a convincing alternative, but the provision is used by the No camp to justify their belief in a "plan B".
"However France votes, it is almost certain that other countries will vote No, so we'll have to re-examine the whole thing," Laurent Fabius, leader of the left-wing No campaign said on France-Inter radio yesterday, when asked whether the "plan B" was fact or fiction.
The Yes camp argue that it would be difficult for Paris to convince the majority of EU members to re-negotiate the treaty they have just ratified. And whose desiderata would determine the French re-negotiating position: Trotskyists', communists', the extreme right-wing National Front's or the Viscount de Villiers'? Would President Chirac really go to 19 other right-wing European governments to plead for a more left-leaning treaty? Leaders on both sides of France's debate brandish disaster scenarios. Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin warned on Tuesday night that a French No would create "a political crisis that would take the form of long months of economic crisis." The day France votes No, Raffarin said, "She gets off the train . . . If we reject this treaty, Europe will be knocked out." It was "a lie to say there's a plan B," he insisted. "There is no alternative treaty."
The president of the ruling UMP party Nicolas Sarkozy, who like Delors supports the treaty, may also have helped boost the No vote. On the day Delors broke the taboo on the "plan B", Sarkozy said the constitution would force France to change.
Economic liberalism is anathema to much of the French population, and Laurent Fabius seized on Sarkozy's remarks, saying, "I must render homage to Monsieur Sarkozy" for saying "that this constitution is incompatible with the French social model."
Sarkozy provided one of the lighter moments of the campaign in Chirac's native Corrèze on Tuesday night. Alluding to his own poor relations with Chirac, Sarkozy addressed the first lady, Bernadette Chirac. "Over the past three and a half years, there have been moments more complex than others. One person held out a hand to me, listened to me, respected me. It was you, Madame. If things never went beyond the limits of the irreparable, it is because you were the good fairy . . ."