BERGERAC, France, May 5 (UPI) -- Even as 40 million French voters began heading for the voting booths Sunday to cast their ballots in what has become a vast national plebiscite for and against the extreme right-winger Jean-Marie Le Pen, the political parties were girding for the next imminent election.
Ironically, the campaign may show that even if Le Pen loses Sunday's battle, he might be winning the war.
The next battle is the elections in June for the National Assembly, the French legislature, and the stakes are high. On the one hand, humiliated by the defeat of the socialist presidential candidate, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, the left is trying desperately to rally its divided ranks. They hope for a left-dominated assembly that can restrain the power of a re-elected conservative President Jacques Chirac.
The problem is that this divided power, known in France as cohabitation, has led to the political stagnation and widespread voter apathy that opened the way for Le Pen's success. Another five years of cohabitation, another five years of divided rule and frustration between a conservative president and a socialist government, could make Le Pen or (since he is now 73) his successor look even more attractive as a way to break the deadlock.
On the other hand, the incumbent President Chirac needs a center-right majority in the parliament to have any chance of enacting the urgent social and economic reforms that France needs. Cohabitation has been Chirac's excuse for the thin record of accomplishment on which he stands.
The problem for Chirac and his conservative supporters is that they probably cannot win a majority in June without the votes of many people who voted for Le Pen. The temptation for Chirac is to start stealing some of Le Pen's policies, in recognition of the plain fact that Le Pen has come so far because he has articulated the concerns of many French voters about crime, lawlessness and immigration.
Le Pen promised to bring back the death penalty, to give the police broader powers to arrest and detain suspects and to build 200,000 new prison spaces. Chirac could easily pledge a stern law-and-order campaign, to hire more police and open new prisons and review the liberal criminal code that spares juveniles and has allowed gangs of young teenagers to rampage with impunity.
But there are two reasons why he cannot go much further. The first is that Chirac dare not copy too much of Le Pen's agenda for fear of being tarred with the same brush. The second reason is that Europe won't let him.
The use of the death penalty is barred by the Council of Europe. To bring it back risks France's expulsion. And France alone cannot change its asylum laws; these are now a matter for the 15-nation European Union, which is drafting a common EU-wide system. And on immigration, France can draft its own laws, but within a context that remains controlled by the European Union under the Schengen rules.
The Schengen system, named after a tiny Luxemburg town on the border where France and Germany meet, has abolished customs posts and virtually abolished passport procedures for travelers moving between most European Union countries. So once an immigrant arrives in Greece or Spain or Italy, he or she can move to France or Germany without having to show any documents. French immigration policy is thus only as good as the passport controllers in Athens or Lisbon allow it to be.
Equally, Chirac cannot echo Le Pen's attacks on globalization and free trade, because trade rules are now handled by the EU Commission in Brussels. And Chirac is a strong advocate of the European Union. He cannot follow Le Pen's demands that France leave the EU and the new single currency, the euro. The successful introduction of the euro has been one of the few accomplishments that Chirac could boast.
In short, Chirac's dilemma proves Le Pen's main point, that the erosion of French sovereignty by the EU has gone so far that there is little an elected French president and government can do on their own. They cannot even chart an independent economic policy, since the money supply and the interest rates are now controlled by the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.
Le Pen will almost certainly be heavily defeated in Sunday's presidential election. But the issues he has raised about crime and immigration and the powers of Europe will not go away, if only because they now both define and confine Chirac's political future. The more of Le Pen's policies that Chirac tries to steal to seduce Le Pen's voters in the June elections, the more he will find himself trapped by the powers of Europe -- the very point that Le Pen has sought to ram home in this election campaign.
