This report in Thursday's Guardian (UK) gives some insight into why so many French are planning to vote against the European Constitution on Sunday, even when they live in areas, like Lille, where the benefits of European integration appear manifest. -- Passions are running high: "Nassera Bouhlala, a civil servant in her early 20s, was waiting for a friend. 'I'm voting No because this text is purely about the free market and competition; French jobs will be lost to countries where the wages are lower and the protection is less,' she said. -- Daniel Leclerc, a trade unionist who works for a large chemicals company, said the constitution would destroy France's social system. 'Part of my No is reasonable and responsible, it's a good leftwing No,' he said. 'But it's also a pissed-off No with the situation in France at the moment, with a government that does nothing to ease the suffering of the victims of globalization -- in fact, makes it worse.' -- Mr. [Henri] Emmanuelli [a Socialist Party figure who has broken with his party's stance to oppose the constitution] summed up their concerns: 'Europe is not a value, it is a project, a container, and unlike the neo-liberals, the Yes-men, the compromise merchants, I am interested in its contents,' he roared. 'Our No, France's No, must be the event that shakes up the debate, that saves the future of the social Europe we have been working for all our political lives, and that they are now trying to bury. This text is the neo-liberals' revenge for 150 years of social progress. It will not pass.'" -- But you don't have to be a socialist to have doubts about neoliberalism in the 21st century. -- Even conservatives are beginning to have serious doubts about the time-honored shibboleth of free trade. -- Paul Craig Roberts, a former U.S. assistant secretary of the Treasury in the first Reagan administration, thinks that technological change has altered the nature of free trade's effects. -- The world is a different place than when the theory of free trade was formulated by Ricardo in the early 19th century. -- In terms of economic theory, "There is no basis for comparative advantage when factors of production are as mobile as traded goods," to quote Roberts. -- Because of the unprecedented mobility of the factors of production, some think that the belief that jobs that are lost in one country (say France, or the U.S.) due to the free trade policies of globalization will be replaced by others as good or better is simply unfounded. -- As a result, the ladders of social mobility are collapsing, and inequality is increasing....
Special Reports
European Integration
IN THE HEART OF EUROPE, A BIG NO LOOMS
By Jon Henley
** Culture capital and continental gateway threatens to repay Brussels' largesse by spurning constitution **
Guardian (UK)
May 26, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/eu/story/0,7369,1492371,00.html
LILLE -- They were gushing like schoolgirls. "He was so logical, and full of such passion," said Evelyne, a 43-year-old nurse. "And just so right," said Carole-Anne, who was "a few years older than that." It was "one of those moments," she said. "I feel like I understand the universe."
The object of their effusions was a gaunt, gravel-voiced former minister who, for the past hour, had preached the virtues of voting No in Sunday's referendum on the EU constitution. In the city that calls itself "the heart of Europe," they loved him.
Henri Emmanuelli is a class act. But what made the rapturous reception most interesting was where he was: Villeneuve-d'Ascq, a neat, green, new-town suburb of Lille, France's great northern metropolis. Fifty years ago, the city was the country's industrial locomotive. Then came the slump.
For nearly three decades, Lille suffered. It got to the point, Carole-Anne said, "where you were just too ashamed to admit you came from here." The turnaround began in the mid-1980s, thanks to a combative Socialist mayor, Pierre Mauroy, and to Europe.
Lille, now prosperous, beautifully restored and buzzing with commercial and creative initiative, is France's most European city. Its international railway station is called Lille Europe and its successful business center is known as Euralille. Last year, the city many French still think of as a depressed, rainswept, post-industrial dump was the European capital of culture.
The jobless rate may be half as high again as the national average, but tens of thousands of jobs have been created in services, distribution and new technologies.
"This metamorphosis," said Gilles Pargneaux, mayor of the suburb of Hellemmes, "would not have happened without Europe. Over the past five years, greater Lille will have benefited from 3.6bn euros [£2.5bn] in EU funds. Europe is rebuilding us, and from a purely selfish point of view alone, France has to keep its voice in Europe, so that money keeps coming."
Against that background, the five-minute standing ovation for Mr. Emmanuelli, a rebel Socialist campaigning against the party hierarchy, on Tuesday night is intriguing. It is more so because the current mayor of Lille, Martine Aubry, was a top minister in France's last Socialist government, and is also the daughter of a former European Commission head and arguably the best Socialist president France never had, Jacques Delors.
"It's unreal," said Thomas Vigreux, a Young Socialist bravely handing out Yes tracts outside the No rally. "We have the youngest population in France and more than 100,000 students; we're 40 minutes from Brussels, an hour from Paris, two hours from London. We're the future. And we want to turn our back on all that, vote No?"
Inside, and on the streets of Lille, not everyone saw things that way. There, the undeniable and practical and immediate benefits brought to much of this region by the EU manifestly failed to measure up to the more ideological concerns.
Beneath the banner announcing that the meeting had been organised by the Villeneuve Committee for a Progressive, Popular and Citizenly No, Nassera Bouhlala, a civil servant in her early 20s, was waiting for a friend. "I'm voting No because this text is purely about the free market and competition; French jobs will be lost to countries where the wages are lower and the protection is less," she said.
Daniel Leclerc, a trade unionist who works for a large chemicals company, said the constitution would destroy France's social system. "Part of my No is reasonable and responsible, it's a good leftwing No," he said. "But it's also a pissed-off No with the situation in France at the moment, with a government that does nothing to ease the suffering of the victims of globalization -- in fact, makes it worse."
Mr. Emmanuelli summed up their concerns: "Europe is not a value, it is a project, a container, and unlike the neo-liberals, the Yes-men, the compromise merchants, I am interested in its contents," he roared. "Our No, France's No, must be the event that shakes up the debate, that saves the future of the social Europe we have been working for all our political lives, and that they are now trying to bury. This text is the neo-liberals' revenge for 150 years of social progress. It will not pass."
What is behind it is a deep and growing fear that France will have to give up some of what makes it France. Listening to Mr. Emmanuelli and his cheering, tearful, wholly convinced supporters, that particular France has not surrendered quite yet.
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