The Hindu : International : "No" vote looms in the heart of Europe

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Friday, May 27, 2005

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International

"No" vote looms in the heart of Europe

Jon Henley

LILLE (FRANCE): 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 E.U. 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 centre 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 euro3.6 billion in E.U. 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 E.U. 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.

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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