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Last Updated: Apr 26th, 2007 - 09:55:10 |
Like the US, modern France was founded on a set of universal values and a firm belief in its exceptional destiny. The country still employs the second biggest diplomatic corps in the world (after the US) to spread those values abroad. Dominique de Villepin, the current occupant of the Matignon, has vigorously upheld this universalist tradition. In a defiant speech at the United Nations in 2003 on the eve of the Iraq war, the then foreign minister described France as a country that "has never ceased to stand upright in the face of history and before mankind".
But it is telling that Mr de Villepin is not standing in this year's French presidential elections. Lionised by the French for his defiance at the UN, he has since been vilified as prime minister for failing to overcome the country's domestic problems. It was Nicolas Sarkozy, a former interior and finance minister wholly grounded in domestic affairs, who shunted Mr de Villepin aside to emerge as the presidential contender of the centre-right ruling UMP.
To a striking degree, France's presidential elections have revolved around immediate everyday issues and questions of national identity. When voters have had the opportunity to quiz the candidates they have bombarded them with questions about jobs, purchasing power, crime, pensions, education, immigration and healthcare. Rarely have the great international issues of the day been raised, even though such matters are the traditional domain of the French head of state.
So for the moment, at least, France has turned in on herself and it is far from clear what expression she will be wearing when she turns outwards again (see box).
Even if the world has not impinged much on these presidential elections, they could still rebound on the world. France is the sixth biggest global economy, the second most important country in the eurozone and a leading member of the Group of Eight industrialised nations. France plays a pivotal role in the European Union. Its determined defence of the Common Agricultural Policy has defined the EU's approach to talks within the World Trade Organisation. Alongside Britain, France is a permanent member of the UN Security Council and the only other country in Europe with the ability to project serious military force abroad.
The most glaring symptom of France's gloomy introspection was its rejection of Europe's constitutional treaty in a referendum in 2005. In a stunning electoral insurrection, voters ignored the overwhelming advice of the Parisian political, business and media elite and voted against the treaty. In a single blow, France's disgruntled voters killed off the secret dreams of those federalists who still envisaged the creation of a United States of Europe. "France is to be admired in that she is destined to die, but to die like the gods by transfiguration. France will become Europe," wrote Victor Hugo, the 19th-century idealist. No one talks like that any more in Paris.
Even though few of Hugo's successors have been so comfortable with the idea of France's mortality, they have envisaged Europe playing a vital functional role, binding Germany into a peaceful Europe, promoting prosperity and expanding France's influence. Charles de Gaulle, always a defender of Europe's nation states, nevertheless talked about Europe acting as the "Archimedes' lever" for France, magnifying its power in the world.
But French influence in the EU has been steadily diluted as the original six members have admitted a further 21 countries to the club. That loss of power was brought home in 2004 when France was unable to prevent José Manuel Barroso's appointment as president of the European Commission. In French eyes, Mr Barroso was seen as a disturbing economic liberal.
Paris has also grown increasingly anxious that the Franco-German engine that drove the European project since its inception has stalled. Following reunification, Germany has regained the courage to assert its national interest, rediscovered its ex-Warsaw Pact neighbours in central Europe and seems quietly to despair of France's loss of direction. Following the adoption of the euro, a lack of control over monetary policy causes growls of French displeasure about the "sado-monetarist" approach of the European Central Bank.
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the former French president and author of the constitution, has said France's rejection of the treaty has left it isolated in Europe. For the first time in 50 years, France no longer has a project for the EU. "France is losing its influence," he lamented in an interview in Le Point magazine. "You can see that its recent propositions have not aroused much interest among our neighbours. And remember that this is the country that launched the idea of a single currency and election to the European parliament by universal suffrage. Where is its voice today?"
But the rejection of the constitution stemmed not only from a loss of popular confidence in the European ideal. It also reflected a surge in French nationalism. If Paris could no longer control Brussels, the No campaigners argued, perhaps more powers should be returned from Brussels to Paris.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the hard-line National Front who shocked France's political elite by coming second in the 2002 presidential race, condemns the EU for acting as the "Trojan horse of globalisation". The EU has been effacing Europe's boundaries, encouraging mass immigration and destroying France's identity. France must seize back control over its destiny and reassert its sovereignty and national values, he says, if it is not to become an amorphous subset of "euro-globalisation".
As interior minister and presidential candidate, Mr Sarkozy has responded to Mr Le Pen's discourse and promised to reconcile those voters who said No to Europe's constitution with those voters who said Yes - even though in many ways their positions appear to be irreconcilable.
In spite of being the son of a Hungarian immigrant, Mr Sarkozy has plunged into the highly contentious debate about national identity and immigration. Indeed, he has even proposed to create an Orwellian-sounding Ministry of Immigration and National Identity to regulate the inflows of legal immigrants and ensure their proper integration into French society. Mr Sarkozy has said that responsible politicians must address voters' fears in these matters. France cannot allow "no-go" areas in its national debate.
Gallic gulf
With increasing fervour, Mr Sarkozy has sought to redefine national identity, embracing the country's Christian heritage while reaffirming its secular traditions and universalist values. Immigrants must love the country or leave it, he has said, employing a phrase first used by Mr Le Pen. Mr Sarkozy stirred up further controversy by condemning some Muslim immigrants for slaughtering sheep in their baths - though he has accepted the need to build more abattoirs that conform with halal practices.
Mr Sarkozy has been vehemently attacked from the left for such "divisive" rhetoric. His Socialist opponents have accused him of stigmatising segments of the French population in a cynical ploy to win voters from the National Front. For his part, Mr Le Pen has claimed that as the son of an immigrant with three grandparents of foreign origin, Mr Sarkozy is not French enough to be president.
In an interview with Le Figaro newspaper on Wednesday, Mr Sarkozy defended himself from the attacks from both sides. "The France that voted No to the European referendum is still there. All I have wanted to do is to say that I have heard the suffering, the exasperation, and that I have understood the crisis of identity that it is going through."
Mr Sarkozy is proposing to relaunch the EU by pressing for a slimmed-down constitutional treaty that could be adopted by parliamentary vote rather than a referendum. This would enable the EU to introduce a more efficient institutional structure and conduct a more muscular foreign policy. But he has also been responding to the eurosceptics by calling for a more protective EU trade policy, the return of the community preference to favour EU-made goods and the cessation of accession talks with Turkey.
Taken at face value, some of Mr Sarkozy's rhetoric would appear to challenge the tenets of the EU's founding Treaty of Rome, which permits the free movement of goods, people and capital. He has attacked the ECB for an overly tight monetary policy that has been boosting the euro and killing French industry's competitiveness.
Mr Sarkozy's main opponent, Ségolène Royal, the Socialist party contender, has also been playing the nationalist card - albeit in a far less sensational way. The daughter of a disciplinarian army officer shocked some of her internationally minded colleagues by insisting on singing "La Marseillaise", the national anthem, at the end of her campaign rallies. She then called on the French to take more pride in their country and fly the Tricolor flag on the July 14 national day. Ms Royal has also been likening herself to another "daughter of Lorraine", Joan of Arc, the national resistance leader, who lately has become the figurehead for Mr Le Pen's campaigns.
Yet Ms Royal faces a particularly acute challenge when it comes to European policy. Even though she campaigned in favour of the constitution, she is conscious that a large section of her own party voted against it. Some of the most prominent members of her election team, notably Jean-Pierre Chevènement and Arnaud Montebourg, were vocal champions of the No campaign. She has tried to avoid saying what she thinks about a revived constitution by promising to submit it to another referendum.
Ms Royal has, however, called on the EU to do more to protect its citizens from the ravages of globalisation and to strengthen its social policies. In her 100-point presidential pact, she called for the mandate of the ECB to be changed to take jobs and economic growth into consideration, not just inflation. She has also promised to press for an EU social protocol setting minimum salary levels and stricter levels of labour protection.
It is an indication of how far France has lurched towards nationalism that even François Bayrou, the enthusiastically pro-European leader of the centrist UDF party who is running third in the polls, has had to shift his ground. Stealing some lines from Mr Sarkozy's speech book, Mr Bayrou has called for the EU to be "protective, if not protectionist". He has also made much of his opposition to Turkish accession and promised a referendum on a revived constitution.
Diplomats suspect that the aggressive noises towards Europe made by the three leading candidates would quickly soften on entering the Elysée Palace. France is so hard-wired into European institutional arrangements that it could not insist on a different approach without provoking a rupture with other member states. Besides, the diplomats argue, the election of a new president, a return of confidence and the recovery in the eurozone economy will all help reconcile France with the EU and the rest of the world.
But some French politicians suggest it will be far harder to put the nationalist genie back into the bottle now it has been set free. If France decides it no longer wants to import internationalism from the EU, it will seek to export nationalism to Brussels.
Besides, nationalist politicians can always point to the Declaration of the Rights of Man in defence of French interests. "The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation," it states.
ILLUSION OR ELIXIR? FOUR FRENCH FICTIONAL 'SCENES OF POLITICAL LIFE'
A government-commissioned report on the future of France in a globalised world recently outlined four possible scenarios. Naturally, this being France, they were all named after novels from Honoré de Balzac's Human Comedy. Like Balzac's fiction, these scenarios are "not completely true and not completely false", according to the panel of French and foreign economists and business people who wrote the report at the behest of Christine Lagarde, the trade minister. "But the novel would be nothing if, in its august deception, it was not true in its details," wrote Balzac.
Les illusions perdues
(Lost Illusions)
In this scenario, considered the least likely by the report's authors but advocated by extremist politicians on both left and right, France turns its back on globalisation and goes it alone. To protect domestic producers, France slaps punitive tariffs on imports, reducing competition and raising prices. This rejection of the principle of the free movement of goods, people and capital leads it to quit the European Union and abandon the euro.
The re-adoption of the franc leads to chronic inflation and a collapse in living standards. Households devote an increasing share of their spending to food and clothes; the leisure and luxury sectors wither away.
As a result of the economic dislocation, companies shift production abroad, the best and brightest quit the country, social tensions escalate and strikes and riots erupt. France loses its status in the world as its influence shrivels.
Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes
(Splendours And Miseries Of Courtesans)
France adopts a seemingly smarter approach to protectionism: increasing value added tax on selected goods, blocking foreign takeovers, subsidising sheltered industries and encouraging job creation in sectors that cannot be outsourced. In the short term France flatters itself that it can boost its own economy while remaining relatively open to the world.
But over time French industry loses its competitiveness, investment falls, the trade balance deteriorates sharply and the price of goods and services increases. Tourism is the only sector to thrive, but France progressively turns into one big camping ground.
The absence of labour market reform deepens divisions between the privileged and the precarious. The young and the over-50s are particularly vulnerable. The state's finances erode, reducing its ability to promote social cohesion. Increasingly focused on its internal economic difficulties, France steadily loses its influence in Europe and the world.
La peau de chagrin
(A Diminishing Asset)
Unwilling to make the difficult choices, France muddles along as best it can, faithful to the adage that "policies with obscure objectives cannot completely fail". Insufficient investment in higher education and research results in high-technology businesses relocating elsewhere. French industry retreats into areas - such as luxury goods, food and nuclear power - that are sheltered from competition from low-cost Asian exporters.
The economy steadily loses its competitiveness and the trade balance deteriorates sharply. High long-term employment persists. There is social sclerosis and a very slow modernisation of public services. Anxiety spreads as the French fear they are the victims of globalisation rather than its masters. France sees some of its European partners, such as Ireland, the Nordic countries and the UK, shoot ahead while others catch up fast and eventually outdistance it too.
L'elixir de longue vie
(The Elixir Of Long Life)
France takes the painful steps necessary to reform and flourish. It introduces more flexibility into its labour market, gets a grip on its public finances - giving the government more room for manoeuvre - and invests heavily in education, training and research.
Following consultation among government, business leaders and trade unions, France develops a coherent strategy to benefit from globalisation. French industry focuses on its strengths - fashion, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, computer software, cars and aerospace. The "Made in France" label becomes synonymous with excellent design and luxury.
France attracts more foreign investment and increases its exports to the developing world. Small- and medium-sized businesses are supported, creating many new jobs. More efficient and better-financed public services channel government money to where it is most needed to redress social concerns.
France modernises its farming sector, concentrating on value-added products. This helps Europe reform the Common Agricultural Policy and eases multilateral trade talks. Thanks to its growing prosperity, a more confident France regains a leading role in Europe and helps improve environmental standards and international development.
Source:Ocnus.net 2007
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