Free Republic

It was a crucial mistake to send out the entire constitution to every French voter, the architect of the EU's first constitution Valéry Giscard d'Estaing has said in an interview. In an interview with the New York Times, his first since the French rejection of the constitution two weeks ago, the former French president apportions most of the blame to president Jacques Chirac for failure in the referendum campaign. One crucial mistake was to send out the entire three-part, 448-article document to every French voter, said Mr Giscard. Over the phone he had warned Mr Chirac already in March: "I...

It was Louis XIV who is supposed to have told the Paris parlement: "L'État, c'est moi." ("I am the state."). Valéry Giscard d'Estaing - who, although he prefers to compare himself to the American founding fathers, has all the hauteur of the Sun King - might with equal frankness have declared: "I am the superstate." The British are becoming accustomed to the former French president's occasional lectures on the BBC, in which he expounds the grandiose schemes of the European constitutional convention he chairs. Yesterday M Giscard excelled himself. On the Today programme, he explained why we should be happy...

EUOBSERVER/STRASBOURG - Members of the European Parliament suspect Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, president of the Convention on EU future, of taking too much interest in the American institutional system, with a view to introducing it in the European Union. Mr Giscard, who is leading an unprecedented reflection on the future of the European Union in the Convention, which may end up writing a European constitution, was reported to have read up over the summer the history of the United States of America and its institutional system. VALÉRY GISCARD d'ESTAING - Chairman of the European Convention was reported to have read up...