Germany has become the ninth country to ratify the EU constitution when the upper house of parliament voted in favour of the treaty. In Friday's vote - timed to give the flagging "Yes" campaign a boost ahead of Sunday's referendum in France - Germany followed Austria, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain in approving the text. The Bundesrat vote, a formality given the support for the constitution from the main German political parties, followed approval in the lower house on May 12. Former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the architect of the charter, was in the Bundesrat to witness the vote. He made a last minute appeal to French voters to back the constitution, although opinion polls suggest that it will be rejected in the referendum.

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