FRANCE: Post-referendum, there are some strange alliances being formed as President Chirac girds his loins for bigger battles to come, writes Lara Marlowe in Paris.
France's rejection of the European constitutional treaty is provoking an intense debate here over how the country and the EU should organise their economic and social policies. President Jacques Chirac fired the first shot on Tuesday night when he promised to defend "the French model" which "is not of the Anglo-Saxon type".
Criticism of Chirac by the former EU commissioner Chris Patten on Channel 4 indicates a broader dispute is brewing between prime minister Tony Blair - who will be in a position of force as president of the EU from July 1st - and Mr Chirac.
Mr Chirac's credibility is at an all-time low. Hubert Védrine, who was France's foreign minister from 1997 until 2002, told The Irish Times: "What says no longer has much importance. People know very well that he's said everything and its opposite. He's a demagogue who never really explained to the French what the state of the world was, and how they had to adapt to it. He uses the words 'social model' as if they were a lucky charm."
If, as reported, prime minister Dominique de Villepin intends to launch public works and jobs-for-the-young programmes, Védrine is sceptical about his chances of success.
"Those were socialist policies that didn't work. They're subsidised with public money. We must find policies that create real jobs."
Védrine remains a socialist and the president of the François Mitterrand Foundation. So it is extraordinary that he now publicly espouses liberal reforms in France.
" Sarkozy is right when he says that the best model is the model that creates jobs," Védrine says, referring to the president of the centre-right UMP and new deputy prime minister. "A model that creates 10 per cent unemployment for 20 years is not a good model."
For Védrine, an influential political consultant so closely associated with the legacy of François Mitterrand, to support Sarkozy marks a stunning departure in French political thinking.
"This country really needs deep, liberal reforms," Védrine explains. "No French politician has inspired the confidence to do that. I don't know if Sarkozy will do it one day.
"We have this blockage which is partly based on reality, and very much based on psychology. We must find a way that is bearable for the population, stop replacing civil servants who retire, have a vision of what the modern state will be. We can't just hang on to empty words like 'the French social model'."
The French socialist party was split by the referendum. Védrine says some of his colleagues in the leadership think as he does.
"But they dare not say it, or they are waiting. They have an electorate that is so traumatised that they cannot say it right now." Even if France undergoes reforms, Védrine stresses, "the level of social protection will remain high." It is, he says, "just a question of asking people to work a little more, perhaps to retire a little less early, except for the most arduous professions, of paying unemployment benefits for a less long period, of asking people to accept a job after a certain amount of time.
"We're not talking about doing away with benefits or the minimum wage. It's not all or nothing. It's about correcting the excesses so that this country ceases to live on credit."
It was a mistake for proponents of the constitutional treaty to claim the text was a bulwark against globalisation, or that it would graft the French social model onto Europe.
"The confusion between the European institutional framework and the great social upheaval in the world is stupid," he says.
"The economic and social situation in Europe depends on the global context, which is the same whatever the treaties."
Védrine disagreed with the socialist party's contention that the treaty would create a social Europe. "We have to redefine our social policy at the level of the nation-state," he says. He has distanced himself from party politics since 2002 because, "I was sure the left would get tangled up in dreadful contradictions; the left can't come up with a credible line on reform.
"They were on a collision course over Europe. I didn't want to get caught in that battle." The French left's most fundamental contradiction in European policy, Védrine says, "is believing they can impose the ideas of a minority in Europe, in a system run by majority decision".
In the aftermath of the referendum, Védrine says France must disentangle the questions of European integration and social policy.
European politicians must define the geographic and institutional limits of the EU.