JACQUES DEMARTHON / AFP-GETTY IMAGES IMPASSIONED Sarkozy wants a yes but thinks France will have to change, too

SPECIAL REPORT     Reality Check
	France is split over the E.U. constitution, but the real debate the country should be having is about itself
	By JAMES GRAFF

Posted Sunday, May 22, 2005; 10:39BST
In the shadow of the last blast furnace in Hayange, a declining French steel town near the border with Luxembourg and Germany, union and communist activists gathered in the local sports hall one recent night to plot their campaign against the proposed European Union constitution. They had put up posters in the windows of the drab stucco building advocating a europe of peace, but — as in thousands of similar meetings throughout France over the past few months — the spirit was more of revolution. For people like Jacques Maréchal, who teaches at a drug-abuse center and organized the meeting, the constitution is a direct threat to France's cherished traditions of social solidarity, workers' rights and welfare provision. He thinks it falls uniquely to him and his compatriots to bring the document down in this Sunday's referendum. "We didn't wait for the others in 1789 and we shouldn't now," says Maréchal, 42, lean, friendly and intense. "A French non could unleash liberating energy for all Europeans. Through this wall of money, we will make a passage for a society that's more for the people."

It's a long way from the grit of Hayange to the gilt of the Elysée Palace in Paris, yet President Jacques Chirac too has invoked the French Revolution — to sell the constitution to his countrymen, though, not to tear it down. The document is "a daughter of 1789," he told an audience of 6.5 million during a televised pitch from the tapestry-bedecked antechamber of his Elysée office earlier this month, and they should rally behind it because "the French, more than others, have good reason to be proud that these values will from now on be the general rule [in Europe]."

It's ironic, maybe even quaint, that people on both sides of the constitutional debate should cite the French Revolution to bolster their case. Back in 1789, France was in the vanguard of a democratic movement that swept away the old order across the Continent. But these days, France is more likely to be bringing up the rear rather than leading the charge for radical change. The process of European integration was launched as a fundamentally French project, and for most of the last 50 years French personalities, ideas and influence dominated it. But now, the French are seen by many not as a model nation but an obstacle to reform. France has led the fight to preserve the E.U.'s bloated and inequitable agricultural subsidies, penalize Central Europe's embrace of low corporate taxes, and loosen the reins on deficit spending. Having been accustomed to an E.U. that in many ways was France writ large, the country is struggling to adapt to a much larger union in which Paris has a harder time calling the shots.

Continued ...

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