The Loudmouth Across the Channel

pete quentin, 12 November 2007

There is one man across the English Channel who Gordon Brown must wish would shut up, writes Cem Suleyman.
The man I’m talking about is Valery Giscard d’Estaing (VGE), former President of the French Fifth Republic (1974-81).
VGE was President of the Convention on the Future of Europe, which drafted the original, and failed, EU Constitutional Treaty. Ever since the Constitutional Treaty was torpedoed by the non / nee votes in France and the Netherlands, VGE has made it his mission to make the people of Europe realise the error of their ways and eventually adopt the Constitutional Treaty in full. In the case of France’s non VGE has said “The French did not vote for or against this text, they avoided the text. This mistake must not happen again”. As you can see I’m not discussing the most humble of men!

What is most embarrassing for Mr Brown is that VGE continually claims that the new Reform Treaty, or Lisbon Treaty, is the same as the original Constitutional Treaty in relation to the content of both documents. According to VGE, the differences between the Lisbon Treaty and the Constitutional Treaty are purely cosmetic, such as the eradication of text mentioning the EU flag and the EU anthem. The process whereby the Constitutional Treaty has mutated into the Lisbon Treaty is described by VGE as follows:
“It was the legal experts for the European Council who were charged with drafting the new text [the Lisbon Treaty]. They have not made any new suggestions. They have taken the original draft constitution, blown it apart into separate elements, and have then attached them, one by one, to existing treaties. The Treaty of Lisbon is thus a catalogue of amendments. It is Impenetrable for the public”.
Revelations such as these have been a source of embarrassment for Mr Brown and have also provided well-needed ammunition to those campaigning for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
Thankfully for Mr Brown, the Lisbon Treaty affects the UK differently compared to the rest of the EU, according to VGE. VGE seems to confirm that many of the UK’s ‘red lines’ will in fact hold. For example, “in the area of judicial harmonisation and co-operation, Britain will have the right to duck in and out of the system as it pleases”.
But perhaps most importantly, there are problems taking all of VGE’s comments uncritically. The Constitutional Treaty is VGE’s baby and it is in his interest to at least make people believe that his ‘legacy’ has been preserved.
VGE failed to achieve re-election to the Elysee palace in 1981, losing out to Francois Mitterrand, blaming his defeat on Jacques Chirac for failing to provide him with sufficient backing in the second ballot. So while not behaving anywhere near as badly as Ted Heath did after losing the Conservative leadership, this loss has undoubtedly haunted him ever since.
We should therefore remember not to always take at face value the words of a failed President groping for a legacy. We all remember the twilight of Blair’s premiership and the constant bleating about that particular ‘legacy’…