Bayrou calls for rethink on EU treaty

Francois Bayrou says he is confident he could win the upcoming French presidential election.

New opinion polls released on Thursday reveal that the race has become a tight three-way battle. The election is held over two rounds on 22 April and 6 May.

One poll, conducted by CSA and published in Le Parisien daily, shows that if a first round vote were held this weekend, conservative Nicolas Sarkozy would garner 26 per cent of the vote, Socialist Segolene Royal 25 per cent and Bayrou 24 per cent.

The percentage of undecided voters - about 40 per cent - is higher than any presidential election in 25 years.

But, speaking exclusively to TheParliament.com, Bayrou said he was optimistic he could win.

“I am quietly confident that I will succeed in the election and the reason for my optimism is that I think I know what the French people want,” he said.

“They want change, a new political deal and a new deal is exactly what I am proposing.

"The people in France want a president who brings them together, a president who reassures them."

Bayrou was speaking before outlining his European strategy in a keynote speech at the Friends of Europe in Brussels.

Addressing a packed audience, he said France needs to be at the centre of efforts to provoke an EU-wide political debate on the EU’s future.

On the issue of the stalled constitutional treaty, Bayrou, a 55-year-old farmer and former classics teacher, called on EU leaders to produce a new, easy-to-understand text.

He said, “The orginal text was impossible for most ordinary people to understand. Even the most committed found it difficult to get beyond the first 20 pages."

Bayrou, who received 6.8 per cent of the vote when he ran for president in 2002, said this was arguably the main reason why French people voted against the treaty in a referendum in 2005.

“The French public also feared the treaty would result in them losing their identify.”

He said the only viable option for reviving the treaty is to produce a shorter text, without political influence, even if this involves starting again from the beginning.

He agreed with German chancellor Angela Merkel that this text should be produced as the result of an intergovernmental conference.

“France is a founding member of the EU and needs to be at the heart of Europe but Europe faces a constitutional crisis which needs resolving,” he said.

His strategy for ‘re-founding’ Europe consists of examining the fundamental questions that, he says, were not answered by the draft treaty: who the EU consists of and what dictates the reasons for further enlarging it.

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