[syndicate] FrenchNON=Protectionism And Racism Hand In Hand

Sat May 28 23:38:49 CEST 2005

CraZazie ! Le Pen is another Stephen C!
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: ohnoqt at yahoo.com 
  To: syndicate at anart.no 
  Sent: Saturday, May 28, 2005 4:48 PM
  Subject: [syndicate] FrenchNON=Protectionism And Racism Hand In Hand

  May 27, 2005
  Just Say Non
  The New York Times,

  By STEPHEN CLARKE 
  Paris

  MAY is usually a relaxed time in France. In a good year, the French will spend as many days out at their country house or on the beach as they will at work:)). But this May, not only were May Day and Liberation Day on Sundays, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin also told workers that they were losing their one remaining long weekend. They had to work on Pentecost Monday so that employers could donate 0.3 percent of the wages to the aged.

  Then, to cap it all, politicians at the National Assembly voted to give themselves the day off after all.:)))

  Right now Mr. Raffarin could not be less popular if he outlawed smoking, lingerie and nudist beaches. :)))) And this is one of the men heading the "oui" campaign for Sunday's referendum on the European Constitution.

  All of which may not constitute a rational reason to vote "non," but the referendum campaign has not been at all rational from day one :)))

  Vote oui, Mr. Raffarin and President Jacques Chirac tell voters, or the European Union will come tumbling down. A clever reworking of the ancient Gauls' fear that the sky was going to fall on their heads.

  Vote non, the unions and the far right say (in a rare - and embarrassed - show of unity) or on Monday your jobs will be stolen by hordes of invading Poles. Protectionism and racism hand in hand.

  In any case, the French are being asked to vote on something that they cannot possibly understand. :)) The oui lobby sent the text of the Constitution to voters, but this was as productive as trying to sell swimwear with Mr. Chirac and Mr. Raffarin as models. 

  Want an example? Start with Article III-139, which declares: "This subsection shall not apply, so far as any member state is concerned, to activities which in that state are connected, even occasionally, with the exercise of public authority. European laws or framework laws may exclude certain activities from application of this subsection." (!!!)You need a law degree to vote on a clause like that.

  There is also a long section (Protocol 9, Article 61) on the purchase of holiday homes in Malta. :))There are probably few subjects in the world that interest the French less than this, except maybe the rules of cricket and American football. :))

  But voters don't have to plow that far through the 450-page text to get turned off. I don't know any French person who'll vote in favor of a document that begins with the words "His Majesty the King of the Belgians ..." :))) All of which explains why I would like to see a third box on the ballot paper. Let's make it a real test of opinion by adding, beside the "oui" and "non" slots, a "je ne sais pas" box. The French would choose "don't know" in a landslide. Then take the day off. 

  Stephen Clarke is the author of a book about an Englishman's year in France.

  http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/27/opinion/27clarke.html

  Frederic Madre <fmadre at free.fr> wrote: 
    cool! I vote NO to this liberal bullshit!

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      From: Sympa Owner [mailto:sympa at kilby.copyleft.no] On Behalf Of ohnoqt at yahoo.com
      Sent: Saturday, May 28, 2005 2:32 PM
      To: syndicate at anart.no; nettime-fr-raw at anart.no; nettime-fr-raw at anart.no.
      Cc: compost_23 at yahoogroupes.fr
      Subject: [syndicate] French no-vote will lead to the emergence of populist and nationalist movements

      THE COMING FRENCH NO VOTE -  A DISASTER FOR EUROPE ?

      Marcel H. VAN HERPEN

      Director, Cicero Foundation

        The possibility of a French no vote on the occasion of the referendum on the European Constitution can no longer be excluded and in many European capitals a growing nervousness can be observed. Commentators ask themselves what the consequences will be for the Constitution. Will it definitively be dead or can it still be saved by some kind of artificial reanimation? 

        Let us examine the different scenarios that may happen after a French no-vote:

        1. The French no vote will remain an isolated event and will not be followed by the parliaments or electorates of the other EU member states (except, probably, Britain). In this case one might expect that the French - after some minor symbolic concessions on a 'social Europe' have been added in a protocol - will be asked to vote again, as the Irish and the Danes did before them.

        2. If more EU member states vote against - let us say: four or five - the no-vote will get enough momentum to consider the Constitution definitively dead and buried.

        3. What will happen in this case? The malaise will be great and the possibility that a second effort will be made to revamp the Constitution in a time-consuming Convention must be excluded. Especially France will find itself in a delicate position. Apart from streamlining the institutional framework the Constitution meant an important leap forward in the field of the Common Foreign and Security Policy, an old French policy goal. France would find itself in the same embarassing position as in 1954 when the French Assemblie blocked the European Defence Community, which equally was essentially a French project.

        4. A revamping of the Constitution being excluded, the EU governments may return to a policy of 'piecemeal engineering', a policy of small steps in the European Council which - in the end - even might have the same impact as the new Constitution. This is, of course, not the most beautiful scenario, because it deepens the rift between the political elites and the European populations, and might, therefore, lead to a drawback in the form of the emergence of populist and nationalist movements.

        5.  A French no vote could trigger also another outcome: it could boost a renewed interest of the French and German political elites for a Franco-German 'core' Europe. The German Green Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer has lost his original interest in this idea, but a 'Great Coalition' of SPD and CDU/CSU that soon could replace the existing coalition, could revive this idea that was launched in 1994 by the CDU members Schduble and Lamers.

        6..... There exists therefore a real danger that the still embryonal Political Europe could disintegrate into three blocs: 
        - a French-German dominated core-Europe,
        - a transatlantic North-West Europe around Britain,
        - and an Eastern bloc that would organise the the new EU member countries that were part of the former CMEA (Comecon) into a pro-US bloc. 

        According to one author "Our continent is confronted with two burning problems: the social and the European problem (). The social question is, rightly, the main subject of the public debate (). At the same time the European question, which is not of lesser importance, is simply ignored. Many don't even know about its existence  it is not taken seriously." The author, so it seems, is talking about the coming French referendum, where the debate about the importance of the European project is hijacked by national politics and social questions ('l'Europe sociale', 'l'Europe untra-libirale'). 
        In fact this quotation comes from the book 'Pan-Europa', published in 1923 by Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, the father of the European idea. More than eighty years later his words still have a great actuality, warning the Europeans that their disaffection with the economic policies of their national governments should not jeopardise the extremely important task of building and consolidating a politically viable Europe.
      Paris, 11 April 2005

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