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Eric Cabanis/Agence France-Presse

France's main labor unions rallied last month against the constitution in Toulouse.

LETTER FROM EUROPE
The Continental Dream: Will the French Shatter It?
By ELAINE SCIOLINO

PARIS, April 12 - Historically, the French have liked the idea of a united Europe as long as they could run it.

France, after all, was a founding member of the six-country European Coal and Steel Community, which was the precursor to today's 25-country union.

But in a brutal shock to the European experiment, 11 opinion polls in France in the last month have indicated that the French are poised to vote no in the national referendum on May 29 on Europe's first constitution.

The margins may be small, but each poll has been a dagger into the heart of the French political elite. The constitution must be ratified by every member state to take effect, and if a member with the grandeur and gravitas of France votes no, the document will be doomed.

So with few exceptions, French politicians on both the right and the left have predicted dire consequences for both France and Europe if that happens.

"We would likely be completely isolated," President Jacques Chirac said last month. Rejection of the constitution would threaten France's ability to protect its national interests; nothing less than "peace, stability, democracy, human rights and economic development and social progress in the world of tomorrow" is at stake, he added.

The mood in the country is reminiscent of 1992, when the French voted on the European Union treaty that committed members to creating a single currency. Predictions of a no vote provoked such a powerful wave of currency trading throughout Europe that the Continent's monetary system almost collapsed.

In the end, the French approved what was known as the Maastricht Treaty by a razor-thin margin. But surveys of voters leaving the polls revealed deep fears about the loss of French sovereignty to a European super-state.

This time, the loss of sovereignty is one of several reasons for resistance, even though the constitution itself is by no means a revolutionary document, since it will not cede ground in the two areas where sovereignty is most crucial: foreign and defense policy.

Rather, it will consolidate past European Union treaties into a single document. It will also change the union's voting system, removing, for example, national vetoes from some policy areas, like immigration, and streamline the union's administrative leadership. But as France's role as the dominant power of Europe has shrunk - first with the unification of Germany, most recently with the expansion eastward of the union to add 10 new members last year - France has become more anti-European.

"The French believe that their system is the best and that they are the center of the universe," Bernard Kouchner, the Socialist former health minister and one of the most popular political figures in France, said in a telephone interview. "It's not true. They don't realize they are like an old ship sinking slowly in the sea."

The constitution has been transformed into a repository of all the fears of the French today.

Some are convinced that the constitution will unfairly strengthen the power of the new countries of the union. Nearly 70 percent of farmers are opposed, for example, according to a poll in mid-March, because they see the European Union taking away precious farm subsidies.

Others fear that accepting the document will further damage the ailing French economy and increase unemployment - 10 percent in January - by moving jobs to places like Poland.

"For the past 25 years unemployment has been the French public's foremost concern and their prime voting motivation," said a recent editorial in the left-leaning newspaper Libération, in explaining mounting opposition to the vote.

Others want to use the referendum to register general opposition to the French government. But even François Hollande, head of the Socialist Party and a potential presidential candidate in 2007, asked voters at a rally in Marseille last month to set aside politics and vote yes for the good of the country.

Addressing "all those who are suffering" from the policies of the Chirac government, he said: "You want to punish, you want to express your anger, you want to register your discontent and you are right. But do not make Europe the sacrificial lamb when the government is to blame. Europe deserves better."

Then there is the group of 95 mayors of towns in Haute-Saône, in eastern France, who have threatened to refuse to hold the elections in their towns. They are protesting the latest decision by the Ministry of Education to close some schools to reflect demographic changes.

Concern about the referendum was widely seen as the reason the Chirac government decided to raise the salaries of unionized civil servants by eight-tenths of 1 percent last month.

The move was seen as a display of solidarity with the government workers and a transparent ploy to get them vote yes next month. Just a month ago, civil servants had been told there was no money for raises.

The newspaper Le Monde ran a cartoon on its front page last month showing Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin handing out 100-euro bills to civil servants as Mr. Chirac, a European Union flag attached to his head, handed them yes ballots.

"Nobody can say whether this strategy of palm-greasing will result in an electoral victory on May 29," said an editorial in Le Monde a few days later, adding, "We often wonder if there is still a pilot in the governmental plane."

The government, meanwhile, has mounted a vast, but haphazard, campaign to sell the constitution.

One million copies of it have been made available free in the 6,000 stores of the Casino supermarket chain, two million more in 14,000 of the country's post offices. There is a Web site and a phone number for those who want free copies sent to them. A children's book, "Explain the European Constitution to Me," with a preface by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the former president, is being distributed at schools. Mr. Chirac will debate a group of 80 handpicked university students on live television on Thursday.

But so far the French elite has failed to explain what the constitution will do for the average French citizen. This is a country where lobbying has not yet been elevated to a fine art. There is no "war room," as there was when the Clinton administration lobbied Americans to embrace the idea of NATO expansion, no bipartisan observer group of lawmakers, no pinpointing of interest groups.

"Allow a simple mother to give you some common sense advice," the editor of Elle Magazine, Michele Fitoussi, wrote in an editorial. "For us 'no' is completely part of the national culture. It's a sport and a hobby. Small kids learn it from the cradle."

She said politicians should deal with voters the way good parents deal with their children: "Talk to us. Explain it to us. And make yourself clear and convincing."

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