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08 October 2012

Presseurop: Europe, not good enough for the French


The French parliament is set to vote on the Fiscal Compact on Tuesday 9 October. But the new proposals Paris has made to reform the European Union are further evidence of the complacency and provincialism of the country's pampered political class, writes a French journalist.

There has already been one casualty in the debate on the Fiscal Compact: France’s reputation as a European strategist. No one in Europe can have any further doubts: France has no “grand design” or “secret plan” that could set down the foundations for a European political and institutional “new deal” that would reconcile the social market economy with the constraints of Darwinian globalisation.

The need for such a deal is critical, especially in the context of the solutions adopted over the last four years, which have strained the existing architecture almost to breaking point, and have ridden roughshod over democratic principles. Of course, as the Prime Minister announced, France will “submit proposals” in the run-up to the European Council summit on 17 and 18 October, which will probably be the first in a long series of meetings devoted to the reform of the union. But we can already imagine that in their bid to satisfy a wide range of sensibilities these proposals will be extremely prudent and radically pragmatic. We can therefore fear that they will be out of place in the debate already launched in Brussels and Berlin.

For weeks, European Council President Herman van Rompuy has been refining his idea of a “Eurozone budget”. The principle of modifying union treaties has to all intents and purposes been accepted, if only to include the €500 billion European Stability Mechanism, which is expected to come into force in 2013. The German government has already announced that it is willing to organise a referendum in the federal republic in the event that proposed changes might affect its sacrosanct constitution. So what is behind the spineless approach adopted by Paris? There are all sorts of political reasons as well as a wide range of legitimate reservations that focus on the liberal DNA of the European Commission or even on the principle of supranational union, which is a debate as old as the European community itself.

Unfortunately, the drive to make the European Union an instrument for ”solidarity oriented integration”, as wished for by President Hollande, will inevitably require the sacrifice of a certain measure of national comfort. That does not mean that politics will have to be denationalised, but rather that national politics will have to be integrated into debate and reflection on paradigms proposed by other Europeans if we are to succeed in achieving the level of fertile historic compromise that gave us the single market and the euro.

Under the last government and under the current one, the crisis has demonstrated that Paris is simply not ready. Here the comparison with Germany, which, having pushed for a wide-ranging debate on the goals of the union since 2009, is now openly demanding and preparing for an EU convention, is once again cruelly telling. The mechanics of the crisis have resulted in a situation that the construction of Europe scrupulously aimed to avoid: it has placed Germany at the centre of the European game, in an objectively dominant position. For those living on Olympus, this perspective can perhaps be viewed with serenity. The same cannot be said for us ordinary mortals.

Full article

Original article, "L'élite politique française est-elle vraiment à la hauteur du projet européen?", by Florence Autret -Copyright ©2012 LaTribune.fr



© Presseurop


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