This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 PARIS 002942 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
DEPT ALSO FOR EUR/WE, EUR/ERA, EUR/PPD, DRL/IL AND INR/EUR 
AND EB 
DEPT OF LABOR FOR ILAB 
DEPT OF COMMERCE FOR ITA 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV ELAB EU FR PINR SOCI ECON
SUBJECT: FRANCE'S MAY 29 REFERENDUM ON EU CONSTITUTION: THE 
"SOCIAL" VS. THE "LIBERAL" IN THE REFERENDUM DEBATE 
 
REF: A. (A) PARIS 2863 
     ¶B. (B) PARIS 2825 
     ¶C. (C) PARIS 2663 
     ¶D. (D) BRUSSELS 1556 
     ¶E. (E) PARIS 2604 
     ¶F. (F) PARIS 2516 AND PREVIOUS 
 
SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED -- PLEASE HANDLE ACCORDINGLY 
 
SUMMARY 
------- 
¶1.  (SBU) Despite urgings from Jacques Chirac and most of 
France's mainstream political leaders to cast ballots on the 
EU Constitution's merits in the May 29 referendum, many 
French voters remain focused on unemployment and other 
pressing economic and social issues (reftel B).  Diminished 
purchasing power, urban tensions and insecurity, job flight, 
lack of opportunity, and fraying social services 
infrastructure are issues much closer to most French voters 
than EU institutional issues addressed in the constitution. 
Many blame an expanded Europe, driven by "liberal" (open 
society/free market) ideas that is in turn part of a global, 
competitive economy as threatening France's control over its 
national destiny and its much vaunted social model, to which 
many in France remain deeply attached.  For these voters a 
'no' to the EU Constitution May 29 is a vote to protect a 
French way of life that many feel is under siege.  END 
SUMMARY. 
 
FOCUSED ON DOMESTIC CONCERNS 
----------------------------- 
¶2.  (SBU) Since March 18, 22 polls in a row have shown that 
among voters who say they have decided how they will vote, a 
majority say they plan to vote 'no' in France's May 29 
referendum on the proposed EU constitution.  Many of these 
ordinary Frenchmen and women are uncertain and apprehensive. 
They are focused on their ever more straitened economic 
prospects and declining quality of life.  They are worried 
that the constitution and an enlarged Europe will make things 
worse for them, specifically, by imposing a "liberal" 
dismantlement of the "French social model" (welfare state) 
that they look to for maintaining their well-being. 
President Chirac (see reftel A for his latest effort in 
tandem with Chancellor Schroeder) and the rest of France's 
pro-'yes' establishment have so far made little headway in 
convincing these voters, particularly those whose political 
sympathies are left-of-center, that the proposed constitution 
protects the French social model rather than undermines it. 
 
CONVERGENCE OF THE YES ARGUMENTS 
--------------------------------- 
¶3.  (SBU) The different 'yes' camps have recognized that 
reassuring ordinary voters that France's system of 
state-provided services is safe under the proposed 
constitution is key to turning the electorate's attention 
away from domestic worries.  Supporters of the proposed 
constitution are confident that, if voters can be brought to 
focus on the merits of the proposed charter, some of the 
French public's traditional support for Europe will re-assert 
itself.  Through the first month of the referendum debate 
(reftel F) (beginning March 4 when President Chirac announced 
the May 29 date for the referendum), the leaders of France's 
three centrist political currents emphasized different 
reasons for voting 'yes,' and stressed their differences over 
how best to tackle the very same social and economic problems 
that are besetting ordinary citizens.  This 
domestic-political-bickering-as-usual added to voters' 
dismissal of the political class and fueled in part the 
rising tide of 'no' (reftel C). 
 
¶4.  (SBU) Following a TV appearance by President Chirac April 
14 (reftel E) that laid bare voters' domestic concerns and 
their suspicion of the constitution's liberal bias, 
spokespersons for all the 'yes' camps in TV appearances and 
press interviews began highlighting the proposed 
constitution's "social" dimension and its provisions for 
protecting "states rights" in maintaining social and public 
services.  In sum, all who advocate 'yes', whether of left or 
right, are now stressing the "social" in the "social, market 
economy" (an operative phrase that appears a number of times 
in the proposed constitution).  Those who advocate 'no,' are 
stressing the "market" -- alleging that the "ultra-liberal" 
constitution would leave France helpless in a huge, formless 
and "savagely capitalist" Europe, unable to maintain the 
social services and safety-nets that French citizens have 
long considered rights to be protected. 
 
COMMENT: TWO CONTENDING THEORIES 
-------------------------------- 
¶5.  (SBU) Among the chattering classes in Paris, two leading 
theories are making the rounds, both purporting to explain 
the significance of the confrontation between 'yes' and 'no' 
among the French: "biting the bullet of Thatcherism" and 
"re-run of April 21." 
 
¶6.  (SBU) For proponents of the first, the choice facing the 
French on May 29 really is between a "social" versus a 
"liberal" socio-economic model, between a 
no-longer-affordable "European social model" and a gentler 
version of the "Anglo-Saxon economic model."  Proponents of 
this theory stress that the proposed constitution does, 
overall, indeed enshrine liberal principles -- and that is 
precisely why so many French people are against it. 
According to this view, in an expanded Europe dominated by 
"post-Thatcher countries" (UK, Spain, the Nordics, and the 
states that had been under Soviet domination) France remains 
a "pre-Thatcher country" (along with Germany and Italy), and 
voting 'yes' to the proposed constitution signifies assenting 
to a deep shift in social and economic model for France. 
Voting 'no,' on the other hand, signifies defending a complex 
set of habits deeply ingrained in French society, which are 
in fact incompatible with "biting the bullet" of necessary 
reform.  The deep split on the French center-left is seen as 
between those who recognize the necessity of this shift (and 
believe social solidarity can be defended from within an 
open, competitive economy), and those who don't. 
 
¶7.  (SBU) On April 21, 2002, in the first round of France's 
most recent presidential election, well over half the voters 
stayed home, cast blank ballots or voted for marginal, 
"protest" candidates.  Those who see the referendum as 
shaping up into a "re-run of April 21", see in this voting 
pattern evidence of massive alienation and disaffection among 
the majority of the electorate.  In this view, well over half 
the voters cast votes "against the system" on April 21, and 
could well do so again on May 29.  For proponents of this 
theory, 'yes' versus 'no' reveals the deep gulf between the 
empowered and the disempowered, those who feel represented 
and those who do not feel represented in France's political 
system.  This "crisis of representation" in France's 
democracy, according to this theory's proponents, could well 
doom a constitution that, it is generally agreed, would bring 
more democracy to Europe's governing institutions (reftel D, 
para 13).  END COMMENT. 
 
ROSENBLATT