PARIS - President Jacques Chirac risked his solid legislative majority and put France's commitment to Europe on the line yesterday by calling a general election in less than five weeks, nearly a year before the political calendar requires it.
Asking voters to "give France a majority with strength and staying power," Chirac set May 25 as the date for the first round of the early election, with a second round to follow on June 1.
Chirac, whose term as president does not expire until 2002, will not be on the ballot, but he might as well be. The election is a major gamble for his two-year-old presidency as Europe prepares to abandon national currencies in favor of a common one.
Although Chirac barely said so in his brief televised address, the election is intended to give his center-right government a fresh mandate to carry out spending cuts that have been stiffly resisted by the public but are required of any country seeking to convert to the new European currency, the euro, beginning in 1999.
"Nothing is easy," Chirac said, "but we must choose the right path."
Had Chirac waited until next spring, the election would have come just as Europe decides which countries have shrunk their budget deficits enough to join the euro club. Chirac evidently wants to put a safe distance between the two events, but even a year in advance, the vote will be a crucial referendum on the price voters are willing to pay for euro membership.
French voters approved plans for economic and monetary union five years ago by only a 50.95 percent majority. Little about the government's performance or the French economy's fortunes since then is likely to have won the European project additional converts here.
Surveys indicate that many French people agree with Chirac's argument yesterday that European monetary union is "indispensable if we want to affirm ourselves as a great political and economic power with a euro equal to the dollar and the yen." But the euro's anticipated burden on their economic security has made them wary of embracing the budget measures that go with it.
At best, some analysts say, the election will dilute the present governing majority. Chirac and his prime minister, Alain Juppe, currently enjoy the confidence of less than half the French electorate, according to polls, some of which put the figure at less than a third.
Pollster Stephane Rozes said in an interview that the election would give Chirac a chance to unite his center-right majority, reconstituting the divided one he inherited when he took office. Holding about 82 percent of the seats in the National Assembly, the majority can afford even significant losses, and the Socialist-led opposition remains in disarray two years after losing power.
Voter preference polls taken over the weekend give the incumbent center-right parties a slight edge over the Socialists and other parties of the left. The polls also indicated that a slim majority of French people, whatever their party preference, would welcome the chance to go to the ballot box.
The five-week campaign will give them a chance to vent their frustrations over the country's persistently high unemployment - currently near 13 percent - and their fears of the unknown when the French franc disappears in favor of the euro.
When Juppe proposed an austerity program to pare down the French welfare state 18 months ago, the most visible measures were immediately beaten back by massive street protests that paralyzed Paris and other major cities for weeks. More recently, the government has withstood strikes by transit and hospital workers. But its efforts to achieve promised spending reductions have been thwarted, even with a sweetener of modest tax cuts.
At worst, the election could hand Chirac a Parliament controlled by the opposition Socialists - and give France its third government of "cohabitation" since the mid-1980s, with a president of one party and a prime minister and Parliament of another. Such a repudiation could throw into question France's commitment to European integration, which it and Germany have championed for a generation.