European Charter Architect Faults Chirac for Its RejectionBy ELAINE SCIOLINO
Published: June 15, 2005
SourcePARIS, June 14 - As the architect of the European Union constitution, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing seemed at the top of his game, praised as "the Mozart of politics" and poised to go down in history as the founding father of a new Europe.
Only two months ago, Mr. Giscard d'Estaing, a former French president, called the constitution "as perfect as, perhaps less elegant than, the Constitution of the United States of America." Ratification by member countries was supposed to have been easy, and Mr. Giscard d'Estaing, now 79, might even have been asked to become the first president of the entire the 25-country bloc.
But now that his countrymen have rejected the constitution, setting off declarations that it is doomed, he assigns blame not to himself or his document, but largely to the man who currently inhabits Élysée Palace: President Jacques Chirac.
"This was not a vote on the constitution," Mr. Giscard d'Estaing said in his first interview since the French rejected it in a referendum last month. "That is the key point that has been missed by the political leaders, because political leaders don't normally like to say that the vote could have been against them."
Speaking in English in the library of his Paris home, he added, "The French message was, 'We want change in our political leadership.' "
After the defeat, Mr. Chirac replaced the prime minister with a longtime protégé, Dominique de Villepin, and appointed a popular political foe, Nicolas Sarkozy, to a crucial cabinet post, changes meant to restore confidence in the government and inspire the French, as he said in a televised address, to "rally together around the national interest."
But Mr. Giscard d'Estaing, who has been harshly critical of Mr. Chirac in the past, accused the French president of not responding early enough to popular dissatisfaction with his government and of confusing voters by insisting that they vote on the constitution in its entirety, including all previously ratified European Union treaties.
Neither Mr. Chirac nor other European leaders have had a strategy for ratifying the constitution, he said. "The present generation of leaders, whatever their strengths, never put Europe at the top of their agenda," Mr. Giscard d'Estaing said.
His own presidential career ended in an overwhelming defeat in the elections in 1981, so he understands well the vulnerability of political leaders.
But asked whether Mr. Chirac should have resigned following the outcome of the vote, he did not comment, adding, "I want to keep my distance from the leader of the French political scene."
A crucial turning point for the fate of the constitution in France came last March, Mr. Giscard d'Estaing said, when he phoned Mr. Chirac to warn him not to send the entire three-part, 448-article document to every French voter. The third and longest part consisted only of complicated treaties that have already been in force for years.
He said Mr. Chirac refused, citing legal reasons. "I said, 'Don't do it, don't do it,' " Mr. Giscard d'Estaing said. "It is not possible for anyone to understand the full text."
There is no indication that the French would have voted any differently had they decided on only the new document. In retrospect, Mr. Giscard d'Estaing said the Parliament should have ratified the constitution, even though he said he previously endorsed Mr. Chirac's decision to put it to a referendum.
Still, Mr. Giscard d'Estaing said that until the end he believed the French people would vote "yes," and pointedly criticized them. "I thought at the end the French people would be rational people," he said.
The blame spreads even further.
He also said that, had the European Union leaders not left open the possibility of full membership for Turkey in their bloc, the constitution probably would have passed in France. Mr. Giscard d'Estaing is a fierce opponent of membership for Turkey, arguing that it is not part of Europe and deserves only a lesser partnership status.
In a Louis Harris poll published two days after the referendum, however, only 22 percent of the "no" voters said that among their reasons was opposition to Turkey's entry into the European Union. The issue of Turkey was more important in the decision of Dutch voters to reject the constitution in their own referendum three days after the French vote.
Despite declarations throughout Europe that the constitution is dead, because all 25 member countries of the European Union must ratify it, Mr. Giscard d'Estaing is convinced that it will succeed eventually.
He said the ratification process should continue across Europe, and envisions a sequence of events in which most members pass what he referred to at one point as "my document." "In the end, it will pass," he added. "There is no better solution."
His rosy analysis, he insists, has nothing to do with his legacy, which certainly has been burnished since his experience as the president of the constitutional convention.
In 2003, Mr. Giscard d'Estaing was inducted as an "Immortal" into the august Académie Française. Earlier this year, he bought a 15th-century chateau in a small French village named Estaing, helping to solidify his family's tenuous claim to nobility.
But he admits disappointment that his constitution has been rejected. "I wasn't hurt; I wasn't humiliated," he said of the French vote. He added, "I was deprived of a cause for happiness."