What 2005 French event is he talking about?

Factual Questions
1

I kid you not, this is the first paragraph of a keynote address (given in April 2005) I have to edit this morning:

The second part I think I can sort out – I presume he’s talking about Turkey joining the EU. But what referendum is he referring to? (I guess I’ll sort out the facts using Google, but context would be nice.)

And thus begins another day for CairoCarol, who will take take linguistic straw and weave it into rhetorical gold by day’s end…

2

I believe it’s referring to the proposed EU Constitution, which was rejected by French voters.

3

Thanks! I’ll nose around the website to make sure, but it seems to fit the context, such as it is, of what he is saying.

4

I’d just like to say that on first reading, it was blatantly obvious to me that this was what he was talking about – as someone who probably reads more French newspapers than the average doper.

5

This link to a BBC article will probably tell you as much as you want to know :dubious:

6

Ah, but the referendum took place in May 2005, whereas the keynote address was delivered in April.

Never mind. Our speaker predicts the future (sort of … it was almost 55 percent, not more than 60 percent).

7

I think the opinion polls leading up to the vote showed about 60% for Non. The establishment was still shocked when the masses actually defied them, though.

This wasn’t just a French issue, by the way. There were referenda in several EU countries, and another core member state, the Netherlands, also voted No. The British government probably breathed a sigh of relief at all this because they could now shelve their promised referendum, which looked likely to result in an embarrassing No vote too.