meanwhile, in France..........

[Eubulides <paraconsistent@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=619660 
French vote on EU threatens to tear apart Socialist party
By John Lichfield in Paris

14 March 2005

The main French opposition party, the Socialists, risks being torn apart by
France's referendum on the EU constitution. "The mood within the party is
terrible, dramatic, the worst I've known in 20 years as a Socialist," a former
minister and leading member of the party told The Independent.

François Hollande, the party's pro-treaty leader and likely presidential
candidate in 2007, was booed and pelted with snowballs by anti-EU treaty
Socialists and members of more extreme left-wing parties at a rally in France
last week.

The former secretary general of the party, Henri Emmanuelli, told an interviewer
on Friday that a Socialist vote for the constitution would be a repeat of
earlier "mistakes" such as Socialist politicians' support for the
collaborationist Marshal Pétain in 1940. His words produced furious
denunciations from M. Hollande and other Socialist leaders and M. Emmanuelli had
to apologise.

The open warfare has erupted within the Parti Socialiste despite a resounding
vote by members in support of the new EU constitution in an internal referendum
in December. The refusal of the party's left wing, and several senior leaders,
to abide by this has wrong-footed M. Hollande.

More immediately, it threatens the bi-partisan centre-right and centre-left
campaign for a "yes" vote in France's nationwide referendum on the EU treaty on
29 May. Although opinion polls still show a 60 to 40 per cent split in favour of
the treaty, pro-European politicians of right and left fear high unemployment, a
widespread sense of political and economic malaise, the split in the Socialists
and the extreme unpopularity of the centre-right government of Jean-Pierre
Raffarin could yet sink the "yes" vote.

The treaty streamlines EU decision-making, creates a permanent EU president and
foreign minster and incorporates and extends the free market principles adopted
by earlier EU treaties. If rejected by a large, founding member in the
geographical heart of Europe, the treaty would be brain-dead, long before it
goes to a UK vote.

The Eurosceptic right in Britain attacks the constitution as a blueprint for a
socialistic super-state. Left-wing French Socialists, and more extreme French
left-wing parties, say the new EU treaty amounts to an Anglo-Saxon conspiracy to
dismantle the continental "model" of strong social guarantees and public
services.

Many moderate Socialists also dislike the idea of voting again with President
Jacques Chirac and M. Raffarin, which they had to do in 2002 after the Socialist
candidate, Lionel Jospin, lost the second round of the presidential election to
the far-right xenophobe, Jean-Marie Le Pen. There is also opposition to the
European constitution on the French right and centre-right, based partly on the
"sovereignty" arguments heard in Britain, and partly on fear of future Turkish
membership of the EU.