A revolt against the recent Amsterdam EU treaty is being led by the most powerful foreign affairs spokesman in the French national assembly, Mr Jack Lang, who said yesterday that members of parliament in other European countries were also ready to reject an agreement which abandoned great European ideals.
In an outburst which will be seen as an attack on President Jacques Chirac and the German Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, the main architects of EU political accords, Mr Lang said he would not ratify the June accord unless there were rapid moves towards a European federation.
Mr Lang, a senior Socialist Party official and chairman of the national assembly foreign affairs commission, described the Amsterdam agreement as a rump treaty, so poor that it would lead to the continent's intellectual, economic and diplomatic decline.
A former culture minister with a strong personal following among socialists, Mr Lang did not make any direct reference to the Socialist Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, who appears to have been surprised by the outburst on the day he returned from holiday. But there is implicit criticism that Mr Jospin backed down on his objections to the treaty despite a headon clash with Mr Chirac and Mr Kohl just before the Amsterdam summit.
National parliaments must ratify the accord, an updating of the Maastricht agreement which opens the way to membership of eastern European countries and approves budgetary constraints linked to monetary union.
Members of the French parliament close to Mr Lang are understood to be lobbying strongly against a parliamentary "yes" vote and have been in contact with members of parliament in other countries, including Britain.
"The way chosen at Amsterdam is no good, neither in vision nor method," he wrote in Le Monde.
"We have simply stopped up holes in a ship without a captain, a motor or a course.
"Faced by a vigorous, creative and conquering America, Europe offers the spectacle of distressing inertia."