France will hold a referendum on whether to adopt the European Union constitution next year, President Jacques Chirac said today.
"The French people are concerned directly, and will therefore be consulted directly - and so there will be a referendum, which will be held in any event next year," he said in a television interview.
"It will be in the second half of the year," he said in the president's annual interview on Bastille Day, which commemorates the French Revolution of 1789.
Mr Chirac had previously declined to commit France to a risky vote on the constitution, which EU leaders approved last month.
Opinion polls show a majority of French people back the idea of a constitution for the newly enlarged 25-nation Union.
But the late President Francois Mitterrand ran into problems when he called a referendum in 1992 on the Maastricht treaty on European economic and monetary union. The treaty was backed by only a very thin majority.