Leadership Quote by Jean-Pierre Raffarin

Raffarin’s praise reads less like a neutral legal assessment and more like a strategic blessing aimed at a jittery European public. Calling the proposed constitution “one of the European legal documents with the strongest social dimension” is a deliberate attempt to reframe a constitutional project - often caricatured as technocratic and market-first - as something closer to a social contract. The key move is comparative and personal: “since I began following European issues” positions him as a seasoned witness, lending authority while quietly admitting that EU texts rarely inspire anyone outside Brussels.

The subtext is defensive. Early-2000s European integration was dogged by accusations of democratic deficit and “neoliberal” drift; a constitution risked looking like a power grab wrapped in legalese. By stressing “social dimension,” Raffarin signals that the document can shelter labor rights, public services, and solidarity - or at least that it won’t bulldoze national welfare models. It’s coalition language: meant to reassure center-left voters and unions without alienating business-friendly centrists who hear “social” as stability rather than redistribution.

There’s also a French note beneath the European one. In France, constitutional debates routinely get filtered through anxiety about sovereignty and the welfare state. Raffarin, a Gaullist-leaning conservative with pro-EU instincts, is selling Europe as protection rather than threat: a supranational framework that can legitimize social commitments in an era of globalization. The line works because it treats a dry instrument as moral evidence, inviting citizens to see legal architecture as political care.