The country of the people who says 'no'

Joseph Hanimann reflects on the German "ja und nein" and the French "Oui et non" in a "lexical amble along the border" between Germany and France. "With his decision to push through the new youth employment law while at the same time rejecting it, French President Jacques Chirac is employing the same technique for saying yes and no as in Bertolt Brecht's didactic play 'He Who Says Yes/He Who Says No.' In doing so he is giving up the last remnants of de Gaulle's legacy . 'L'homme qui a dit non' – the man who said no – is the name of a play staged years ago in Paris about Charles De Gaulle, whose decision to reject French capitulation in 1940 was proved right by history. To this day, this historical act is echoed in the French manner of saying no: smoothly, but while keeping one's goal firmly in sight. But where the goal is not clear, as with the French "no” to the EU constitution, this form of rejection becomes nothing more than a pose."

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