Last-ditch Fight for France's Eu Vote

With the eyes of Europe upon them, the rivals in France's crunch referendum on the EU constitution entered their final week of campaigning yesterday as a sixth consecutive poll put the no vote ahead.

The poll, by Ifop for the Journal du Dimanche, put the no camp on 52%, against 48% for the yes, among those who have made up their minds. Only 8% of voters were undecided.

More worryingly for the yes camp, headed by President Jacques Chirac and his beleaguered prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the poll showed the popularity of the centre-right government had now reached its lowest level since it was elected in 2002.

Mr Chirac's personal approval rating slipped five points to 40%, his poorest performance for more than eight years. But the percentage of voters declaring themselves "fairly or very dissatisfied" with Mr Raffarin stood at 74%.

"It is a weakened president and a delegitimised prime minister who will be fighting for a yes vote in this vital final week," Jean-Luc Parodi, a political analyst and consultant to Ifop, said.

As anxiety mounts in the yes camp, the debate is getting increasingly bitter. A former prime minister, Raymond Barre, this weekend denounced the "lies of the falsifiers and the hypocrites", and a leading Socialist, Julien Dray, hit out at the "abuses, manipulations and deceits" of "those who peddle the no".

Such arguments underline the difficulty the yes camp faces in attacking the array of forces lined up behind a French no. A leading no campaigner, the nationalist Philippe de Villiers, heads a small pro-sovereignty party, the Movement for France. In a meeting in Paris on Saturday that drew more than 5,000 people, he urged a no vote to "return to France some of the strength and energy which it so badly needs; to restore the country to itself and to its singular mission".

To his right is Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front. Mr Le Pen, said on Friday that a no vote would force Europe to choose "a path compatible with the independence of the nation, the dignity of our people, its security and its liberty". Polls show 92% of regular National Front voters are preparing to vote no.

On the more moderate right of the governing UMP and UDF, the no vote is championed by Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, who says he is "a Gaullist and a Republican" and that his "non" is in favour of "a Europe that will not extend its frontiers as far as Turkey".

On the left, the no camp unites France's Communist party, and the even further-left wing Communist Revolutionary League, who see the constitution as the blueprint for a free-market Europe that will trample on Socialist values.

They held a meeting on Paris's Place de la Republique on Saturday night that drew 4,000 supporters and the anti-globalisation activist José Bové, who declared: "Vote for this constitution and you'll be shooting yourself in the head, abandoning your citizenship. This text will enclose Europe in a liberal economic model for the next 50 years."

Yesterday's Ifop poll showed 53% of Socialist party supporters are now preparing to vote no on May 29, for many reasons including anger with economic and social reforms and a refusal to support Mr Chirac again, as they did in the 2002 presidential elections to keep out Mr Le Pen.

Political analyst Pascal Perrineau said: "The strength of the no camp is that it is so heterogenous that it is having no trouble simply hoovering up all the fears, worries, concerns and angers of a majority of the French population at the start of the 21st century."