Jacques Chirac aims at leadership in Europe, he has challenged America and is trying to alter transatlantic stability but, considering his nation, many doubt he will have the strength to carry out his project to the end.

“What can we expect from a country whose president believes he is Napoleon’s heir and has chosen the emperor’s biographer as Minister of Foreign Affairs?” This sarcastic statement made by a diplomat after the Security Council’s debate that sanctioned the severing of relations between Paris and Washington concerning Iraq summarizes American public opinion on Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin’s France quite well. In truth, we read worse in the press: the French were called cowards, ungrateful and “cheese-eating pacifist monkeys”. Newspapers raked up all occasions when France sided against the United States in the past two hundred years, minimizing the times the two nations acted together.

A famous columnist, William Safire, accused French firms of having been the intermediaries for Saddam Hussein’s purchase of Chinese chemical products that enable the production of fuel for the “forbidden” missiles.
As a reaction to this, many bookings for holidays in Paris and along the French Riviera were cancelled, especially in the Midwest where Bush’s staunchest electors are based. Some citizens even suggested sending back the Statue of Liberty presented by the French Republic as a sign of friendship in the late 1800s. Many restaurants, on the other hand, have removed all French wines from their wine list, and one Anthony Tola, owner of a New Jersey haunt, demonstratively poured the contents of five bottles of Dom Perignon worth one thousand dollars down the drain.
But if the Americans (closely followed by the English) were the most negative in their judgements, France’s policies concerning not only the Iraqi crisis gave rise to many debates in Europe too. Are we witnessing a late revival of the Gaullist grandeur, an attempt at taking the lead of the European Union and exploiting the aversion for war or even an ambitious plan to free Europe once and for all from the American all-embracing influence, making it an alternative power? The words of president Chirac, who even during the most crucial moments of the conflict had a tendency to minimize the future repercussions of his break, did not contribute to make his real intentions clear. To understand something in this issue, we must first of all see what France represents today. During last year’s elections, Jacques Chirac won 82 % of votes in the second ballot, despite his involvement in a series of scandals.
This happened when the socialist candidate Lionel Jospin was defeated by the “fascist” Le Pen during the first round and, despite itself, the left wing too had to vote for him. One month after this victory marked by an overwhelming majority Chirac had no trouble reaching the overall majority at the legislative elections too, thus ensuring himself five years of absolute rule, with a friendly government and an opposition made powerless.
This enabled him to organize a long-term policy. Chirac inherited a difficult situation from the left wing, which had ruled together with him during the previous five years. After a long 2 to 3 % growth a year, that enabled to even absorb the controversial 35-hour law without causing too much damage, the economy entered a stagnant phase, as in the rest of Europe.

During the election campaign, Chirac had promised to adopt the free trade formula “less taxes, more development”, already practiced successfully in other countries, without on the other hand balancing it by appropriately limiting public expenditure. But in implementing this project, he went against the commitments of the stability pact, which prohibits countries that have adopted the Euro to have deficits exceeding 3% of their GDP. Portugal and Germany, who committed the same breach of agreement, resignedly accepted Brussels’ severe criticism and undertook to change course. Paris, instead, threw down a sort of gauntlet at the Commission.
The Raffarin government argued that the national and international context of that moment advised against increasing fiscal pressure, which was already very high; hence, Maastricht regulations or not, France would adopt no restrictive measures till the growth would have once again reached satisfactory levels and the subsequent greater yield of taxation would compensate for cuts in tax rates. Nobody had ever dared so much, especially at a time when a Convention, chaired by a famous Frenchman, the former president Giscard d’Estaing, into the bargain, was trying hard to give fresh impetus to the project of European unification. In fact the partners’ reaction was energetic and the fashion returned in all capitals of the Union to take up accusations that had been made against France from time to time for the past thirty years.

The following is a sample of these:
...When he launched his crusade against the Iraqi war Chirac masterly confirmed in one blow the substance of most of these judgements.
After solemnly celebrating the French-German treatise’s 40th anniversary, he and Schroeder released a joint statement reversing the traditional European line of collaboration with the United States without either consulting nor informing their EU partners. Obviously, the two were convinced that the others would adjust to it in an orderly manner, as on other occasions. When this did not happen, and eight European countries, also numbering Italy, took a different stand, they even had the impudence of accusing these of dividing the Union. There are many more things Europeans hold against France.
A fair share of the so-called “acquis communautaire”, in other words the 80,000 pages of EU regulations all new members must comply with to be eligible to join the Union, has the state-controlled mark of the French nation and meets all French interests. Then, when Brussels’ decisions do not suit France, Paris tends to ignore them or at least to sidestep them, resisting all procedures against the violation to the very last.
A typical example of this issue is the obligation to liberalize electricity, which all countries are conforming to, but which France continues to reserve to the monopolistic EDF. Proverbial is also Chirac & Co.’s dogged defence of their national interests, going to any length to please the extremely powerful lobby of farmers and to be able to enjoy, for still a few years, the current system of grants.
They forced a very weak Chancellor Schroeder into a sort of pactum sceleris that angered all the others. The theoretical advocate of a foreign policy based on the Union’s common safety and decided with a majority vote, Chirac undauntedly follows, especially in Africa, a foreign policy that often clashes with his partners’ one.
For instance, he invited all African, English and French speaking heads of state and government, both democrats and those who guided a coup d’état, to Paris, right in the heart of the Iraqi crisis, to gather proselytes for his cause and present himself as the champion of the Third World. To the great annoyance of Great Britain and many other members of the Union, his guests also numbered Robert Mugabe, president of Zambia, who Brussels had ostracized due to his constant violations of human rights, the unjustified confiscation of European settlers’ property and the sensational electoral malpractice used to keep up his power for 25 years. Paris’ relations with the Arab world are also ambiguous, greatly conditioned by the presence on French soil of five million Muslims, mainly of Algerian origin.
They are poorly integrated and have for years numbered extremist elements that are close to Bin Laden’s ideology. This presence weighs like a rock on French politics to the point that some theorize that Chirac’s baffling (and yet extremely popular in his own land) initiatives on the international front are a diversionary tactic from an internal situation that is all but brilliant.
The constant contrast between the French and non-EC immigrants and the resulting exponential increase in crime were behind the success of Jean Marie Le Pen’s National Front in last year’s presidential elections.

To meet the concern of public opinion halfway, Chirac entrusted the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the tough Nicolas Sarkozy, a follower of Rudolph Giuliani’s famous “tolerance zero” method. He has indeed succeeded in making French cities safer, thus becoming quite popular. However the road is still long, as proved by the series of spectacular jailbreaks organized by leaders of the underworld in recent months. And, despite the government’s progress concerning public order, the basic problems remain the banlieu, which house the Maghrebis and often resemble Algerian kasbahs rather than a European neighbourhood, and the abysmal difference between the two communities in terms of income, education and employment.
The assimilation policy’s failure is not only Chirac’s fault but is a ball and chain in the ambitious project he has announced of renewing France and making it once again Europe’s driving force. Objectively speaking, we must admit that the French are on the cutting edge in many fields. They have no doubt the Union’s most efficient health system - many foreigners too resort to it.
They have an excellent transport network with high-speed railways, a rational and quite capillary motorway network, ports up to the situation and a national airliner that connects France with almost every country in the world. Quite the opposite of Italy and Spain, the French have succeeded in limiting the demographic crisis with an intelligent policy that backs families. Their standard of research is good, they have invested the necessary in this sector, and through their loyalty to nuclear energy, they have the cheapest electricity in Europe. Lastly, their land/population ratio is much better than others, with a density of only 108 inhabitants per square kilometre (Italy 187, Germany 231, United Kingdom 247), thus enabling them to follow a more wide range environmental policy.
The credit for these conquests has often been given to the high standards of the bureaucracy that is guided by leaders who have been trained in famous schools of public administration and have a strong sense of the nation as a state. There is some truth in this, but it is a two-sided truth: France is today the most centralized and state-controlled (dirigiste) country in Europe, with a strong and not always beneficial public presence in the economic sector and an obstinate resistance to any form of regionalization. Free traders have come to the point of stating that “the French nation is colonized by its employees and their trade unions” (Alain Madelin), and hence will never succeed in implementing the “deregulation” believed necessary to make the country more competitive.
Chirac himself, a former ENA student and heir of the Gaullist tradition, is not over enthusiastic about it. One point is certain: under many aspects: France is an abnormal figure in the Europe of twenty-five; it is a state based on the Napoleonic model and is experiencing the phase in which it tends to prevail on other forms and, if ever there will be a federal Europe, this difference will not fail to cause some difficulty. Both in good and bad weather, Chirac’s policies have placed France once again at the centre of the international scene as if it were the great one time power. It is true that it has considerable armed forces, a modest but operating strike force and an updated armament industry, but all the same some suspect that, in opposing the United States so clamorously, the President has stepped into shoes one size too big for him.
We shall see in months to come, but it is right away clear that nothing will be the same as before, even when the Iraqi crisis’ commotion will have died out. Livio Caputo

Translated by interpres sas