France: With only four days to go before France votes on the European constitutional treaty, and opinion polls showing a victory for the No vote at around 53 per cent, President Jacques Chirac and the former socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin are making last-ditch appeals to undecided voters, a quarter of the electorate.
The de facto alliance between two politicians who endured a difficult five-year cohabitation from 1997 until 2002, then battled for the president's office, is all the more ironic because both were once considered hesitant Europeans. Mr Chirac has never lived down his 1978 "Appeal from Cochin" in which he said that advocates of a federal Europe constituted "the party of the foreigner".
This referendum campaign is often compared to the 1992 referendum on the Maastricht Treaty, which passed by one percentage point. Mr Jospin then embraced the idea of a single currency gingerly, telling the French they should "say No to the No".
Now the two former rivals are using the same arguments. In a television appearance on Tuesday night, Mr Jospin made the obligatory dig at the right-wing government, saying: "It's not easy to win a referendum with a government as unpopular as this one."
Taking up one of Mr Chirac's favourite themes, Jospin said the No votes were "incompatible" with each other. "Le Pen says that if the No wins, France should leave the Union. Olivier Besancenot [ of the Communist Revolutionary League] demands a meeting of the Estates General of the social movement. Marie-George Buffet [ the communist leader] says we'll have a different treaty thanks to the mobilisation of progressive forces, when almost all of them in Europe are for the Yes. Laurent Fabius says the treaty is unacceptable, but if there are three changes it's fine . . . Are we going to mix them all up in a cocktail shaker and ask the president of the republic to present the shaker to our astounded European partners?" Mr Jospin asked sarcastically.
Asked what advice he had to offer to Mr Chirac for his "solemn address" on French television tonight, Mr Jospin said: "Smile."
Smiling may not come easily to the French president. The atmosphere at the Élysée Palace is said to be morose. In a background chat with journalists this week, Mr Chirac reportedly admitted a No vote would be a personal failure that would destroy his international stature.
In his speech tonight, Mr Chirac will avoid over-dramatising the consequences of a No vote. For the last time, he will explain what is at stake for France and Europe, and praise the French for having held such a vigorous debate.
Mr Chirac has cast a wide net in recent days, writing to the Council of Armenian Organisations to tell them that the constitutional treaty would complicate Turkish entry to the EU. Speaking via radio to 1.4 milliovoters in French overseas possessions, he told them they stood to lose European subsidies if France votes No.
Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin and the former president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing appear to be the only politicians on the right who believe the Yes side can still win. "The die are not cast; the French are waiting until the last few hours [ to decide]," Mr Raffarin told LCI television yesterday.
Earlier, he told the BBC that unlike Denmark after Maastricht and Ireland after Nice, it would be impossible to ask the French to vote again because "France doesn't say Yes one day, No another."
Other right-wing leaders have given up hope. "It will be a small No or a big No," predicted Nicolas Sarkozy, the leader of the UMP party. Mr Sarkozy's cancellation of a television appearance at the beginning of the week led to speculation in the press about marital difficulties. French politicians' private lives are usually taboo, but Nicolas and Cecilia Sarkozy presented themselves as a Kennedy-like political team.
The steam seems to have gone out of the campaign, with both sides complaining of exhaustion. The left-wing Yes camp will hold two final rallies tomorrow night, in Lille and Toulouse, with the Spanish prime minister José Luis Zapatero and the German chancellor Gerhard Schröder.
The left-wing No camp are reportedly squabbling about who will be invited to its last rally of socialists, communists, ecologists and anti-globalisation activists.