Madam, - Since a similar referendum is expected here, the debate on the European Constitution that is now taking place in France has an urgent relevance to the choices that we shall have to make about the future of the EU, and our future within it. In that context, some of President Chirac's comments, as reported by Lara Marlowe, should not go unchallenged ("Chirac delivers robust defence of EU treaty", The Irish Times, May 4th).
Although the constitution is paraded as an ideologically neutral text that will, as Mr Chirac insists, be "neither left-wing nor right-wing", it is clear that it stands firmly for unregulated neo-liberalism. A brief sampling of some of its contents should suffice to prove this.
Its main thrust is to ossify free-market dogma into constitutional necessity. Its principles are set out early: on the first page, article I-3 emphasises the need for "free and undistorted competition" in a "highly competitive market economy".
Article I-4 sets out the Union's "fundamental freedoms", namely the "free movement of persons, services, goods and capital". When people have risen to such a level that they can be considered on a par with "goods and capital", we know we are on familiar territory. That freedom has made such strides since the great constitutional deliberations of the 17th and 18th centuries is surely a matter of pride.
Readers may note also the document's strangely unconstitutional language. In 202 pages of the main text, the word "bank" and its derivatives appear 176 times, "market" 88 times, "competition" 29 times and "capital" 23 times. Needless to say, such words do not often find themselves so popular in other constitutions, especially the French.
What of public services? We are to be entitled to the "right to access" healthcare facilities, but this is sufficiently vague as to mean we are not guaranteed they will exist. At present, of course, we have the "right to access" all manner of expensive healthcare options in Ireland; but for their inflated price-tags, our current health crisis would not be so overwhelming.
And so on. Readers of the text can judge for themselves its validity. But no-one should be allowed to claim, as President Chirac repeatedly does, that the constitution is some kind of blank slate on which different governments can inscribe whatever policy they choose. The right-wing slant is unmistakable.
That it is somehow "un-European" to vote against the constitution is another fiction: a victorious No vote would compel, at best, a redrafting of the constitution, surely the most desirable outcome.
If France votes against the constitution therefore, it will not be a blow against Enlightenment values, as Tom Paulin most erroneously thinks, but a definitive tilt toward them - liberté, egalité, fraternité. As posters going up around our own country will soon remind us, another Europe is possible. - Yours, etc,
SEAN COLEMAN, Brian Avenue, Marino, Dublin 3.