By Francis X. Rocca on 10.3.03 @ 12:04AM
If it's any consolation, Paris bedevils the rest of Europe the way it thinks it does Washington.
Euroskeptics on both sides of the Atlantic will be watching with
apprehension tomorrow as the leaders of 25 nations meet in Rome to
open a conference on the European constitution.
Nationalists within Europe worry that the constitution will
advance the European Union's centralization, giving more power to
Brussels at the expense of member states. The current draft calls
for a president and foreign minister to speak for the entire EU,
and would reduce the power of individual members to veto collective
decisions.
American Euroskeptics see the constitution as the handiwork of
France, whose policy since President Charles de Gaulle has been to
build up the EU as a counterweight to the New World "hegemon."
Former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who
presided over the group that produced the draft constitution, has
cast the project as the construction of a "political power that
will speak as an equal with the largest powers on the planet."
Whatever the final version of the constitution says -- and there
are signs that not every government will respect Giscard's
admonition to leave the draft intact -- critics who fear the
imposition of a tyrannical superstate or the EU's domination by
French geopolitical interests should take heart from France's own
recent problems with Brussels.
Paris has been tussling for weeks with the European Commission
(the EU's executive branch) over planned government subsidies to
the troubled French engineering conglomerate
Alstom. Bailing out a national company in such a way would
violate the EU's competition rules, in which case the EC is
supposed to punish the French government with heavy fines. For
political reasons, it would rather not do so, but if it does
nothing, the rule will be a dead letter, and a major pillar of the
single market will have collapsed. The parties are negotiating over
a face-saving compromise that would disguise the French subsidies
as loans.
France has been even naughtier in its flouting of the growth and
stability pact, the basic eligibility requirement for countries
using the common currency. Its latest budget violates the annual
deficit ceiling (3 percent of gross national product) for the third
year in a row. When questioned about this last month, Prime
Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said that the pact was a fine thing
in principle, but "our first duty is to get back to growth and
employment" in France.
This sort of talk has angered small countries such as Austria
and the Netherlands, whose inferior political clout leaves them no
choice but to respect the pact. Nor can Raffarin's comments have
charmed the incoming eastern European member states, whom French
President Jacques Chirac described as "badly brought-up" children
for deviating from his line on Iraq, and who will be making
strenuous sacrifices in hopes of qualifying for the euro by the end
of the decade.
France's refusal to play by the rules is on one level simply a
case of national politicians looking out for the people on whose
votes they depend. The choice between local jobs and the
continental monetary system is no choice at all for a prime
minister who wants to stay in office.
But in this instance as in so many others, France is special.
The arrogance with which it violates EU rules -- rules which it
largely designed itself -- is the same arrogance with which it
dreams of leading the EU in superpower rivalry with America. Can
you spot the conflict here?
In the words of
Charles Kupchan: "The remnants of Gaullism continue to hold a
perverse sway over French politics, producing a brand of
nationalism that at once has great ambition for the European
enterprise and stands in the way of realizing that ambition.
… France is no longer strong enough to project its voice on
the global stage, and hence looks to Europe to do so instead. But
that same sense of weakness denies the French the confidence to
move forward on integration and further sublimate the national
state to the European project."
This doesn't mean that the EU will now disintegrate following
France's bad example. The accession of ten new countries next year,
with more on the waiting list, shows that Europeans see plenty to
be gained from integration. Kupchan himself thinks the EU is bound
for superpower status. But it's at least as easy to imagine French
hubris acting as a continuing brake on the power of Brussels, and
of France itself.
topics:
Constitution, Iraq, European Union
