Polls Indicate France Will Say No

France entered the final day of campaigning for the European constitution referendum today with opinion polls giving a clear lead to the no camp.

The morning after Jacques Chirac, the French president, made a final and impassioned plea for voters to approve the constitution, a poll for Le Figaro and Europe 1 radio suggested 55% would vote no.

Mr Chirac last night implored the French people "not to answer the wrong question" and insisted their choice was "about your future, your children's future, the future of France and of Europe".

France's overseas territories vote tomorrow on the text and the mainland follows on Sunday. The result - expected early Monday morning - will be awaited warily in European capitals where it is feared a French no could kill off the constitution.

The German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, and the Spanish prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, plan to lend their support to yes rallies today in a bid to swing the vote towards the constitution.

In the upper house of the German parliament - which today approved the treaty - the author of the draft version of the constitution, the former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, made a last-minute appeal to French voters to back the constitution.

"Germany is preparing to ratify the new European constitution. That is an historic event," he said in a speech to the Bundesrat. "The day after tomorrow, I hope with all my heart, the French will in their turn ratify the constitution in a referendum."

Designed to make the European Union more efficient and democratic, the consitution's supporters say the text is needed to streamline decision making in a much enlarged body and give the union a greater influence in the outside world through innovations such as the creation of an EU foreign minister.

French sceptics, meanwhile, fear the charter will entrench an Anglo-Saxon vision of a ultra liberal union that puts free market economics ahead of social concerns. The unpopularity of Mr Chirac and the French government is another factor, as are fears over an influx of cheap labour and the implications of Turkish EU membership.

The opposition Socialist party officially backs the treaty but has been unable to convince a majority of its supporters to do likewise.

European leaders are likely to wait for the Dutch referendum on the constitution on Wednesday before deciding what to do next. In the event that the results are true to the polls in each country and the treaty is rejected, the constitution could be abandoned or countries still to ratify it could press ahead with their referendums or votes in parliament regardless.

Gianfranco Fini, the Italian foreign minister, today said in an interview in La Stampa that ratification should proceed across the bloc, since the constitution's 2009 start date would give the other EU nations plenty of time to resolve any impasse with France.

He ruled out a complete renegotiation but said key measures could be introduced outside the context of the treaty, while other elements could undergo slight modification.

"The heads of government should invite those countries which have not done so to ratify the treaty, to avoid the impression that the 'no' of one country irreversibly ends up stopping the process for all of Europe," he told the paper.

Spain is the only country so far to put the constitution to a popular vote but 10 countries in all are holding referendums, with Britain the most unlikely of all to approve it if a vote goes ahead in 2006. The government has said there will be a referendum "as long as there is a treaty to ratify".

According to press reports today, Mr Chirac supports keeping the constitution alive in the event of a French no vote. In his address last night, he said a no vote would be seen everywhere as "a no to Europe", opening a period of "divisions, doubts, uncertainties". It would be an illusion, he said, to think Europe could pick up again with a new project since "there is no other project".

Mr Chirac's appeal came, however, amid growing indications that he and most of his cabinet - including the deeply unpopular prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who is almost certain to be out of a job next week - had already resigned themselves to defeat.

If the no camp wins, Mr Chirac would suffer the humiliation of becoming only the second leader, after Charles de Gaulle, to lose a referendum since the founding of the French fifth republic in 1958.