France and the EU: from opportunity to constraint

France's relationship with European integration is traditionally complex and characterized by regular ups and downs. Since the early days of European integration these relations have been punctuated by regular crises. The rejection of the Constitutional Treaty at the French referendum of 29 May appears to signal the beginning of a new phase. Yet this assertion is not self-evident. France has usually had contradictory and unstable attitudes towards European integration. In France, as elsewhere, European integration was subject to a 'permissive consensus'. European Union (EU) affairs were never central to political debates but neither governing parties nor major interest groups or public opinion were openly hostile to European integration. EU policy-making in France was limited to negotiations among political, economic and bureaucratic e'lites. Arguably this has changed since the early 1990s, as European integration has become a more salient political issue (...)