Ayrault warns EU fiscal pact rebels

The French prime minister has warned dissident left-wing members of the ruling Socialist party and its Green allies against opposing ratification of the EU’s fiscal discipline treaty when it comes before parliament.

The government faces an awkward revolt from the left following the president’s decision to accept the new treaty after an EU summit in late June adopted alongside it his demands – for a €120bn package of growth measures and steps towards establishing a eurozone banking union and a financial transaction tax.

President François Hollande had promised to renegotiate the pact, agreed by EU leaders before his election in May, as part of his campaign stance against what he portrayed as excessive, German-led emphasis on austerity in response to the eurozone crisis.

On Sunday his prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault insisted there must be unity among the government’s supporters when the package of measures, including the fiscal pact, is debated in the National Assembly in early October.

“Once a decision of this importance is taken, it must be respected,” he said in an interview with the newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.

“We cannot take the risk of a European crisis in the current context. To continue to have influence in Europe, the president and the government need the clear and solid support of the [parliamentary] majority.”

He warned European Ecology – The Greens party, which has two ministers in the cabinet, to “take account” of their new-found responsibilities as members of the government.

There has been open opposition to the fiscal pact from senior members of the Greens and a number of parliamentary deputies on the left of the Socialist party in recent days. They see it as entrenching right-of-centre austerity policies and imposing unacceptable levels of control by unelected EU institutions over national budgets.

Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the Left Front, which includes the Communist party, on Sunday called for a mass demonstration in Paris to demand a referendum on the treaty, which the Front strongly opposes. As many as 72 per cent of voters support a referendum, according to a CSA opinion poll due to be published in the communist newspaper L’Humanité.

Mr Melenchon, who attracted tens of thousands to his election rallies earlier this year, challenged Green leaders to join the demonstration.

The threat of a revolt prompted a number of party leaders to issue similar calls to Mr Ayrault at a big Socialist party convention at the weekend in the western port of La Rochelle.

“We must not weaken the president and the government in the battle they are waging [against] conservative governments who think growth is the deepening of [economic] liberalism in Europe,” said Bernard Cazeneuve, European affairs minister.

A group of 15 Socialist deputies wrote to Mr Hollande last week expressing their reservations and calling for the president to spell out his vision for the future of Europe. Members of another party grouping – called the “left wing” – have said they will either abstain or vote against the pact.

With 314 Socialist deputies in the 577-seat assembly, Mr Hollande commands a comfortable majority and the pact is supported by the centre-right UMP of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, one of its principal architects.

But a revolt on the issue by a significant number of his own members and the Greens, who have 17 seats, would be an embarrassing setback, underscoring continued divisions within Socialist ranks over Europe just as Mr Hollande is engaging in delicate negotiations with Germany and other eurozone partners over the need for deeper political and economic integration.

There was some relief on the issue for the president earlier this month when the Constitutional Council ruled that the fiscal pact’s inclusion of a legally-binding “golden rule” balancing national budgets did not require a change in the constitution. That would have required a super-majority of 3/5ths of both houses of parliament.