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PARIS, March 11, 2008 (Nouvelle Solidarité) -- "High Treason," was the headline of a column published in Marianne on Oct. 18, 2007 attacking the way the Lisbon Treaty was imposed on the French people. The column was written by prominent French law professor Anne-Marie Le Pourhiet, a specialist in constitutional law. In practice, she says, it would have been simpler to maintain the original text and just erase those passages that have been abandoned. As her article appeared in English in the Oct. 24, 2007 online issue of WorldPoliticsReview, she wrote: "It is not hard to understand, however, why this option was rejected, since it would have made the contempt shown for the will of the French and Dutch peoples -- who rejected the latter treaty in referendums in the summer of 2005 -- too flagrantly obvious."

The authors of the new treaty decided to present everything upside down. "The trick involved appears particularly clear with regards to the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which, unlike in the case of the Constitutional Treaty, is no longer included as an integral part, but appears instead in Article 6 of the new text as follows: "The Union recognizes the rights, freedoms and principles set out in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of 7 December 2000, which shall have the same legal value as the Treaties.

"We have here, then, an 'amending' treaty that thus affirms that a charter that is not part of it has the same legal force as the very treaties that it serves to modify! A more contorted legal procedure has never been seen."

As have many others who tried to read the treaty when adopted, she noted that the governments wanted the parliaments to ratify a part of a treaty, whose initial totality had already been rejected. "But this gives rise to a fundamental question: Inasmuch as the French people have rejected the whole treaty in a legally binding act, how can the President of the Republic alone decide to have the majority of its provisions ratified by the Parliament? President Sarkozy has defended this decision on the grounds that the provisions in question 'were not the object of contestation.'"

Everybody involved in the numerous debates building up to the May 29, 2005 election day remembers that criticisms and opposition were so far-ranging that no one really can say what parts were rejected and what parts were not in the final vote. Le Pourhiet then continues: " The procedure of the President of the Republic in claiming to be able to interpret by himself the will of the French people is completely arbitrary and borders on dictatorship. The constitution of the state of California lays down that a norm that has been adopted by referendum cannot be abrogated or modified except by another referendum. The Italian Constitutional Court has recognized the same principle. In light of such examples, one cannot help but be distressed by the sort of coup d'état that is occurring in France. If the President is convinced that the provisions that remain in the Amending Treaty have been implicitly approved by the French, then he has only to confirm this by organizing a new referendum in order to obtain their explicit agreement.

"How is one, then, to characterize and to sanction such a coup d'état? The text of the highly popular French constitution of 1793 hardly showed a light hand in such matters. Its Article 27 lays down that 'any individual who usurps sovereignty should be immediately put to death by free men.' But we should undoubtedly respect the provisions of our current French constitution, which prohibits capital punishment, and turn instead to Article 35 of the 1793 text. The latter solemnly affirms that 'when government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is for the people and all its parts the most sacred right and the most indispensable obligation.' The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789 [elaborated by Lazare Carnot--ed.], which is integrated into the preamble of the current French constitution, likewise includes the resistance to oppression among the natural and inalienable rights of man."

The French Constitution, she says, states that the Republic is the "'government of the people by the people and for the people'" and that the President is in charge of defending that principle. Therefore "the expression that comes to mind to designate presidential contempt for the popular will is obviously that of 'high treason.'" The term was recently replaced by "'failure to fulfill his obligations manifestly incompatible with the exercise of his office.'" She then stressed, that at the time the French MPs were in the process of evaluating whether they would ratify the treaty or not, the MPs "rather than themselves violating the public trust by ratifying a treaty that has already been rejected by their constituents, they form a High Court to punish the guilty party."

Her conclusion: "In the absence of either an insurrection or impeachment, we will be left with nothing more to do than to shed tears over our voluntary servitude, realizing that our elected representatives represent very well what we have in fact ourselves become: doormats."