Voormalige Franse premier Jospin: "EU-Grondwet is dood" (en) - Hoofdinhoud

Former French prime minister Lionel Jospin writes in a new book that "the constitution is dead", while slamming the French "no" camp for its rhetoric against new member states displayed during the campaign.

Expressing scepticism about voices proposing to put the constitution to French voters a second time, he writes that the French cannot be made to "vote differently on the same text", according to an AP report.

A new referendum would merely be "much noise for nothing", the socialist politician writes in his book: "The world how I see it".

Mr Jospin in the book hits hard at the victorious "no" camp in last May's French referendum however, attacking in particular his fellow socialist party member Laurent Fabius who led the French socialist "no" campaign.

In the book, Mr Jospin targets the "lies" that were used by the opponents of the constitution.

He writes that it was "unacceptable to incite fear of the outside world by rejecting workers from central Europe or by politically manipulating relocation", referring to the word "délocalisations" which was frequently used in the French debate to describe the phenomenon of French firms and jobs moving to central and Eastern Europe.

Mr Jospin also accuses Mr Fabius of "humiliating" the ten new member states of the EU by wanting to place them in a "second class zone" in the EU, referring to the Fabius vision of a multi-speed Europe with an inner core comprised primarily of the founding member states in western Europe.