French Voters Save Europe

The French, we are being told, rejected the new constitution for four reasons. The first is that they are angry with and don’t like the Rightest president Jacques Chirac, so they voted against him. That is lie number one. The French rejected the new constitution, we are told secondly, because they fear a larger Europe out of their control. That is lie number two. The French rejected the new constitution, we are asked to believe, because they fear competition with new, former Eastern Bloc countries. That is lie number three. So far, Canadian media refuses to go to the core of French rejection and tell the real story. (A) The “New Constitution” is unlike any constitution before in history. It is three long volumes written in opaque bureaucratese. (B) Its third volume is, in fact, a document that places economic competition (as defined by economists and corporations) ahead of what we might call the Rights of Man. Indeed, the constitution excludes the principle of raising social security across the union to the levels of the highest quality. It assures, instead, “competition” in a free market of present unequals, rejecting public assistance to equalize levels. Some union. The French didn’t reject competition. They rejected built-in slave labour for the benefit of corporations and used as a tool to rachet down wages throughout the union. They rejected a constitution that permitted the German government, for instance, to have a special, expensive, long-term policy of financial support to German provinces that was not to be available to other, even more needy areas not in Germany. Those countries were expected to attract foreign investment with all the cut-throat exploitation of labour that would imply. As Catherine Samary writes (Le Monde Diplomatique, April 2005, p. 5) the view presented by the constitution is of countries with growing internal national production. But the “numbers camouflage the increasing cost of electricity, rents, and transportation. They camouflage privatization of public services, formerly free and connected to employment in big enterprises. They camouflage the rise in prices of agricultural products, as part of the Common Agricultural Policy – all those together hitting the budgets of poorer populations.” What is more, driven by many kinds of coercion and psychological (national) reasons to adhere, already huge disenchantment has entered some countries that have signed on. Some former Eastern Bloc countries signed on without referendums (Lithuania and Hungary for instance). Those awaiting referendums are uneasy about the outcome. In countries employing referendums a serious program has often been conducted to prevent voters from having full information about the character of the constitution. Bernard Casson writes (Le Monde Diplomatique, April, p. 5) that France is the only country, along with Belgium, to examine the constitution article by article and to force all sides to debate the neo-liberal core of the document. Other countries buried its neo-liberal character. Casson records unrelieved bias among the corporate presses and media of Europe in favour of a Yes. Even in Britain, supposed champion of a free press, BBC coverage of “the European question” surveyed in 2004, with a report released in 2005, was declared inadequate. The report says” “in all the coverage of the Constitution that we have heard or seen, there weren’t any, or very few, explanations of its content.” In addition, the report remarked that “the problem of ignorance among BBC journalists of the European Union must be worked on urgently”. The fourth lie about the French vote is spewing out of radios and televison sets as I write. It is that the new constitution of the European Union has been blocked, that the result will be chaos in Europe, that Europe will founder, and will be unable to compete in a globalized world. Nonsense. With an internal market of 350 million people (and growing), with a highly skilled work force, and with a will to cooperate, European Union countries can forge a constitution that sets the community on a future of justice, hope, and prosperity. But it has to be a constitution for the people of Europe, not for large corporations on that continent and in the U.S.A. It has to be a constitution guarding social securities and public services, one that prevents U.S. dictation or bureaucratic orders to democratic parliaments from corporate gnomes ensconced and totally committed to neo-liberalism in Brussels. It must be a constitution which prevents Tony Blair and Jack Straw (his Minister of Foreign Affairs) from playing errand boys for the U.S. and introducing ways of destroying public education and bringing on the “deregulation” of social services and social securities. The French voters revealed something about history. Like Cuba, France has a real revolutionary history. Like Cubans, the French reach back in history for inspiration about “the Rights of Man”. Like Cubans, the French really move when they see the shape of oppression hovering over them. The vote in France probably can’t be called “revolutionary”. But history may well see it as a vote that made revolution unnecessary.

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French Voters Save Europe

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