Giscard prijst Europese Grondwet aan in Amerika (en)

The father of the European Constitution, former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing i, is back in the US.

On Tuesday (8 March) he was doing his best to sell the 460 article-long treaty to a crowd numbering around 300 people at the National Constitution Centre in Philadelphia.

Before taking up the task of chairing the European Convention, Mr Giscard spent much of his time studying at the Philadelphia Convention, which prepared America's Constitution in 1787.

The European Convention then drafted the actual document, now up for ratification in 25 European countries.

However, the European version turned out to be a lot longer than the American Constitution.

"The builders of modern Europe are not building a nation. They are building a continent", Mr Giscard said, according to AP. "It was not possible to start from a clean slate."

An estimated 100,000 French people living in the United States can vote at French consulates or by absentee ballot in the referendum in France in the European Constitution on 29 May.

And every vote counts.

According to an Ifop poll published in Le Journal du Dimanche (6 March) 40 percent of the French are in favour of the proposed European Constitution, down 4 percent compared to the previous month.

Over the same period, the no side moved up 3 percent, from 28 percent in February to 31 percent in March.

And history shows that French votes on European issues tend to be cliff-hangers. The French people voted in the Maastricht Treaty by a whisker (51-49), a result that was only secured when votes from the overseas territories were counted.

On the other side of the Globe, French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin is also busy.

He is arguing 'Five reasons to vote `Yes' to the EU Constitution' in the Manila Times in the Philippines.