FRANCE: Philippe de Villiers has planted the misleading notion that next week's referendum is about Turkish accession, writes Lara Marlowe in Paris
Twelve days before the referendum on the European constitutional treaty, majority voting intentions have shifted again. The latest poll, published by Le Monde yesterday, places the No camp at 53 per cent.
Philippe de Villiers, an MEP since 1994 and the founder of the Movement for France (MPF), personifies the right-wing No in France: nationalist, "sovereignist" (though de Villiers rejects the term), xenophobic and scathing of the "faceless bureaucracy" in Brussels.
Though they have much in common politically, the extreme right-wing leader Jean-Marie Le Pen disparagingly refers to de Villiers, who wears a signet ring with his family crest, as "the Viscount".
De Villiers has seven children and was long categorised as a traditionalist Catholic politician. The referendum campaign has given him broader notoriety. As a former member of the mainstream centre-right UDF, he is less frightening to centre-right and left-wing voters than Le Pen.
Le Pen is keeping a low profile, to avoid scaring voters away. But de Villiers has campaigned tirelessly against Turkish accession, and against the treaty, since September 2004.
"The No vote will save Europe," he predicts. "The French No will be contagious, communicative, liberating. Chirac says France will be a black sheep; there will be a whole herd of black sheep: Holland two days after us. Why not Poland, Denmark? England?"
De Villiers uses his wit like a sharp weapon. Alluding to the financial scandals that engulfed President Jacques Chirac when he was mayor of Paris, de Villiers used to call the head of state "France's first delinquent". At campaign rallies, de Villiers ridicules the foreign minister as "le grand Barnier" and the minister for European affairs, a former astronaut, as "the rocket that never takes off".
He mocks Valéry Giscard d'Estaing for comparing the European treaty that he drafted to the US constitution, saying that "the Jefferson of Auvergne is in tune with his epoch - that of Brezhnev." It was de Villiers who stirred up French hysteria over a draft EU services directive by renaming it "the Frankenstein directive". Europe is "the shoe-horn of globalisation," he says. He never fails to slam Gunter Verheugen, the EU commissioner for industry, for admitting helplessness in stopping outsourcing. "One has the impression that the government has withdrawn, like the sea from the Mont Saint-Michel," de Villiers comments.
Like a court jester, or the nastiest kid in class, de Villiers has taken to imitating the French president. "Chirac's strength is that when he lies, he doesn't even realise it himself," de Villiers says by way of introduction. He volunteers a parody of Chirac's speech on the day after the referendum. "I won't mimic the voice, because it would be disrepectful," he says mischievously.
But there is a note of mimicry when de Villiers launches into the presidential speech with "mes chers compatriotes". His Chirac congratulates the French people for conducting "a debate which honours French democracy", then transmogrifies into "the leader of the No" camp by saying he has heard his people and promising to heal France's "fractures".
More than any other French politician, de Villiers has planted the misleading notion that a vote for the constitution is a vote for Turkish accession. "The constitution is formatted to bring Turkey in and give her a predominant place in the Europe of tomorrow," he wrote in a book published in January.
"Turkey is not in Europe," de Villiers insists. "True Europeans say No because they want a Europe without Turkey. Out of respect for the Turkish people, we should break off negotiations before they start [ next October], because it will be impossible to say, 'No, we've thought it over,' 15 years from now."
The No camp is often criticised for its disparity; after all, how much can the communists and Trotskyists have in common with Monsieur de Villiers?
"An attachment to France," he replies. "The French are no more chauvinistic than any other country. They refuse to be governed by judges, bankers and commissioners who are outside their country, anonymous and distant."