“Earthquake”, “Historic Victory”, “Despair”, “Near
Civil War”, “A Climate of Hate Without
Precedent”, “Left Majority for the
No”, “The Extremes Supplied the No’s
Battalions”, “The Dream is Over”, “Chaotic
Reaction”, “EU unravelling”.
Responses after French and Dutch electors rejected
the European Constitutional Treaty were anything
but lukewarm. From France’s 29th May Referendum,
(54,87% Non) to the Netherlands’ Vote (61%
Nee) four days later, the results have dominated
the Continent’s political debate. The future
of the EU, and the left’s role within it,
has been thrown into the spotlight. For some it’s
an opportunity to build a vast campaign to assert
the popular will against the tides of neo-liberal
economics and politics. By contrast Commissioner
Peter Mandelson asserts that the time has come
for “painful economic reform” on flexible
pro-market lines, wrapped in “social justice” (Observer
5.6.05). To French Socialist leader, François
Hollande, his country’s ballot boxes registered,
above all, anger and exasperation against President
Chirac and his government. Europe, he declared,
must not be the “victim of France’s
internal disorder” and should become again
a source of progressive “Hope” (Parti
Socialiste. 29.5.05).
Decisions on the broken prospects for the Treaty
will profoundly affect both the EU and the place
of the left within it. Will the left be able to
impose a vision of an ‘other Europe’?
With or without a completely revamped Constitution?
Or will there be, in the wake of these two referendums
in founding EU states, a halt to further political
integration? Would this (as some of the left still
believe) encourage a return to national sovereignty
that socialists could capture? In either case the
key issues were raised during the French and Dutch
campaigns, illustrated by the forces mobilised
by them, and underlined by the aftermath.
France underwent probably the most intense political
debate over the Constitutional Treaty. It began
to heat up in December when an internal Parti Socialiste
(PS) vote gave 58,80% in favour. However the Number
Two of the party, Laurent Fabius, was against.
The former PM (1984-6), and one-time arch-moderniser
stated that it eliminated the European social dimension,
gave priority to fiscal control over growth and
employment, and set in stone its objectives for
the next forty years (Le Monde. 30.11.04). In reply
Socialist leader, François Hollande, observed
that the Treaty was neither socialist nor liberal,
but a compromise within which full employment,
people’s rights, and social protection were
recognised. He asked if “there are inside
the European left sufficiently strong forces to
demand something better?” (Le Monde 1.12.04)
Plainly the left of the PS thought so. The largest
tendency, Nouveau Monde, began, soon after their
internal defeat, to co-operate publicly with the
anti-Constitution Communist Party (PCF), dissident
Greens (whose majority also backed a Yes), the
far-left League Communiste Révolutionnaire,
and the ‘altermondialiste’ (other globalisation)
movement ATTAC. Their leaders Jean-Luc Mélenchon
and Henri Emmanueilli appeared on No platforms
despite pressure for party sanctions. A smaller
PS left current, Nouveau Parti Socialiste, whose
objective is Party renovation and a 6th Republic,
backed the No but respected organisational discipline.
In Holland it was largely the (ex-Marxist-Leninist)
Socialistiche Partij, which has parliamentary representation,
that led the most prominent left Nee campaign.
In an atmosphere of intense hostility charges
of giving succour to the far-right ‘sovereigntists’ (the
very visible Movement pour la France, and the Front
National), who opposed the Treaty on nationalist
grounds, were flung at left No activists. They
countered by pointing to the support of the élite
and Chirac’s party, (the UMP), for a Yes,
the mobilisation of the media behind them, and
the PS’s own record in government of economic
liberalisation and privatisation. Despite strong
emotions, a well-informed debate ensued over the
treaty. Most notably about its institutional framework,
the role of competition, the delocalisation (transfer
to other countries) of jobs, Europe’s defence
strategy, and the prospect of future amendments.
On the last point it remained uncertain until the
last minute as to whether, were there a rebuff,
any Constitutional revision would be possible.
Examination of the No scores in France and Holland
has given a profile of those who voted Non or Nee.
Socially, in both countries the bulk of workers
and unemployed backed a No (79% and 71% in France).
Geographically, the No votes were predominant in
most places, with the exception of areas such as
wealthy Parisian districts intra muros, and prosperous
Amsterdam, and were correspondingly higher in less
favoured locations. However the more ordinary middle-classes
also voted No – over 60% in France. Politically
left supporters and trade unionists in both countries
rejected the Treaty (including 56% of French PS
voters). In France only amongst the base of the
rightwing UDF and UMP, the wealthy, and to a lesser
extent, the highly educated, and the elderly, was
a Yes predominant. Similar tendencies were present
in the Netherlands. It should still be noted that
20% of those who voted Non in the Hexagon were
sympathisers of the far-right, a not inconsiderable
contribution. Or that a xenophobic campaign against
the Treaty was prominent in the Netherlands.
These tendencies indicate a deep popular groundswell
against the Constitution in its present form. The
electorate’s reasons behind the No are harder
to unpack. Being “fed-up”, worried
about unemployment (10% in France), a “desire
to renegotiate” a “too liberal” accord, “threats” against
national identity, as French opinion polls indicated,
show very diverse motivations.
The effect on the left is ambiguous. On one side
there are attempts to sustain a mobilisation for ‘another
Europe’, or (in Holland) a national assembly
to consider the land’s future. France’s
Communists have only just over a score of deputies
in the National Assembly, the far-left lost its
Euro deputies last year and their social movement
allies are divided over their long-term political
objectives. There are calls for a reformed EU,
upgrading its social legislation, investing and
socialising, bringing finance and capital under
control. Few specific means are advanced to achieve
these goals. On the other there is the fall-out
inside the arena where divisions over Europe are
at their most intense: inside the PS. The 4th June
exclusion of Fabius and his supporters from the
Bureau National (and not from the Party’s
Conseil National) aroused strong feelings (Le Monde
7.6.05). Just before this decision an opinion survey
found that 71% of PS sympathisers were opposed
to such sanctions (Liberation 6.6.05). The Party’s
radical wing, aware of the ex-Number 2’s
past as the gravedigger of the ambitious Projet
Socialiste, denounced his relegation but remain
uncertain about his role as a potential alternative
Socialist leader. Only opposition to the new de
Villepin government’s decree to weaken labour
laws to reduce unemployment unites the PS and the
rest of the left.
French politics crystallise the tensions that
have been developing across the Continent for many
years. The French Maastricht Treaty referendum
in 1992 was won only by a sliver of votes. Hostility
to the Constitution is not a simple matter of the
masses rising up against the domestic élite
(Fabius is one of the most élitist French
politicians). There is a continuing legacy of dislike
for the European financial and technocratic institutions
Maastricht set in train. Deregulation and the perception
of pending competition in public services, a general
race to the lowest standards, have inspired left-of-centre
hostility to the EU. Loud criticism of an over-regulated ‘old
Europe’ in need of more liberal reform, through
either a watering-down of pooled sovereignty or
sweeping free-market measures appeals only to a
minority. French economic liberals are largely
content to pursue quietly their objectives through
the EU, and by influence on likely MP Presidential
candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy.
The most plausible conclusion is the simplest:
the electorates of France and the Netherlands have
decided that they did not support the Constitutional
Treaty because they did not approve of its contents.
64% of French electors want a New Constitution,
not the dissolution of the EU. Large sections do
so on left-wing, socialist, grounds, as do their
Dutch counterparts. Others have a variety of reasons,
including a part of the left still nostalgic for
national roads to socialism or patriotic republicanism.
From the far-right No there is an ingrained dislike
of foreigners in general, Eastern Europeans and
Turks in particular, and a desire to revive national
glory. These reflect continent-wide divisions,
with echoes in Britain and in every other country
in the EU. The greatest difficulty for the European
No left that stands for a ‘social Europe’ after
the two referendums is that they have little purchase
on political power. Nor do they have a clear strategy
of how to influence, reform or replace the existing
EU institutions. A formal examination of the Constitutional
Treaty (which highlights its obvious flaws) is
an incomplete method in the politics of the real
world.
An alternative programme always needs a means
to realise it. Without a plan to establish methods
of organising greater political and popular control
over the Union, represented in however a limited
way by this Treaty, the left is stuck in a negative
protesting. The pro-Constitution left also faces
an impasse.
As it is, existing agreements still stand. That
is: free-market Nice, the competition bolstering
Lisbon Agenda, now reinforced by the zeal of Tony
Blair’s EU Presidency. Leading a popular
campaign in a referendum is one thing. But how
will European and global capital, the motors assaulting
a social Europe, be voted out? |
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