Tremors at the Union’s core

Date: 10/09/1998

The prospect that veteran Chancellor Helmut Kohl may be defeated when German voters go to the polls this month is forcing Paris to reassess the balance of power within the EU. Tim Jones reports

BENEATH the feet of Europe's politicians, there is a faint rumbling sound.

It is currently audible only inside the Elysée Palace and along the Quai d'Orsay. In Whitehall, they think they can hear something but they cannot be sure that it is the longed-for sound of a tectonic shift in the balance of power in Europe.

There have been whisperings about such a change for months as the political position of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl has weakened.

French President Jacques Chirac, the man who is now so worried about the Chancellor's increasingly shaky standing, helped to accelerate the process by publicly humiliating Kohl at EU summits in Dublin in December 1996 and in Brussels earlier this year to launch the German leader's cherished single currency project.

But the real prospect that Kohl could be ousted in his country's 27 September elections and replaced by Social Democratic challenger Gerhard Schröder has turned disquiet into outright alarm.

Schröder would come to the job without Kohl's historical baggage. Germany would be swapping a veteran champion of German reunification, who was 14 when the Second World War ended, for an unknown quantity who was born at the end of the war and lived as a young adult through the German economic miracle.

Last week, former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing took his now customary step of speaking the politically unspeakable on behalf of the Paris establishment. He issued an appeal to Germans through no less a platform than the French daily newspaper Le Monde to re-elect Kohl.

Kohl, like his great predecessors Helmut Schmidt and Konrad Adenauer, recognised the value of nurturing the Franco-German pillar within the EU, said Giscard. On the other hand Schröder, he warned, was at best lukewarm about the Paris-Bonn axis and at worst had "great sympathy" for the New Labour government in the UK.

"Experience shows that no advances have been made nor can be made without a close and reasoned agreement between France and Germany," added Schmidt's former soul mate. "I want to voice a warning: any trivialisation of Franco-German relations would bring EU progress to a fatal standstill."

Long-time enthusiasts for "ever closer union" regard this prospect with dismay. They fear summits dominated by arid debates over single market rules, with Europeans focusing on what divides rather than what unites them.

Giscard foresees a Europe in which the British impose their "nation of shopkeepers" mentality on everyone else, aided by Schröder, whose ideas ironically seem attuned to the Gaullist 'Europe of Nations' world view.

The catalyst for Giscard's j'accuse was an interview Schröder gave to a French newspaper days before in which he stressed that UK Prime Minister Tony Blair must be brought into the European policy-making vanguard.

"We will not win over the British without equal rights for them," said the candidate for chancellor. "This is in no way directed against the importance of Franco-German relations but, with Labour, European issues have taken on a new quality for Britain and it would be stupid not to realise this."

This is, of course, music to Downing Street's ears. Since he came to power 16 months ago, and even before that, Tony Blair has worked harder at becoming an EU player than any of his predecessors, holding frequent bilateral summits and carefully cultivating friendships, in particular with French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, Spain's José María Aznar and Italy's Romano Prodi.

Peter Mandelson, Labour's legendary power behind the throne and enthusiast for both the EU and the euro, has exerted his influence on a prime minister who already has a more instinctive love of things European than any other British leader since Edward Heath.

In a bid to capitalise on the cooling of the Franco-German relationship, Blair has established a special unit in his office to review UK policy towards Europe under one of his most respected civil servants, Brian Bender.

He is also emulating the French pattern of seeking high-profile and influential jobs for his compatriots by openly backing the appointment of David Hannay as Europe's first foreign policy chief.

The French establishment is watching these developments with growing alarm. At the recent annual conference of French ambassadors in Paris, Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine admitted that times were changing. "With Germany, personal relations are good but the situation, and therefore our overall relations, are not quite the same as before," he said. "Reunited Germany defends its positions without any complex."

Germany is, it seems, finally shaking off its deep-seated historical guilt. France can no longer rely on its old adversary to roll over on key issues. Stitch-ups like the Franco-German deal to delay postal liberalisation are probably a thing of the past and Paris knows it.

"I'm not saying that Germany has become less European," added Védrine diplomatically, "but it is not European the way France is."

All this means that, in Chirac's words, the French must work on a rénovation of their relationship with Germany, whoever wins the legislative elections. At the same time, Chirac can be expected to put Paris' unique views more firmly than ever, pursuing "new, more ambitious roads for enhancing understanding and cooperation".

No doubt the French are going way over the top. For a start, Schröder is not the crazed 'Anglo-Saxon' liberaliser and NATO-groupie of French demonisation. If anything, the man who, as premier of Lower Saxony, spent 500 million ecu of taxpayers' money to nationalise the Preussag Stahl steel company rather than let it fall into Austrian hands has more in common with French Socialists than with Blair.

The problem is that Schröder is seen, in that absurd geographical reductionism which often characterises diplomacy in the EU, as a northern German who therefore prefers the UK and the US to France and the Mediterranean.

One widely ignored remark in his recent interview was about his admiration for France's lonely battle to support European films, television and software against the onslaught of Hollywood, Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates.

Schröder made a point of hiring Brigitte Sauzay, a former interpreter to Mitterrand, as his foreign policy advisor. She, like her new boss, believes there is no realistic alternative to the Franco-German axis as the motor of the EU.

When European Socialist Party leaders meet in Austria next month, any policy stitch-ups are as likely to be between Jospin and Schröder as between Schröder and Blair.

In his memoirs, Percy Cradock, top foreign policy adviser to British premiers Margaret Thatcher and John Major until 1992, reminisced about the "sporadic efforts" made by London to chip away at the Franco-German marriage.

"The object was to balance the Franco-German axis, always the main force in Community politics, to alter the balance of power in our favour or simply to prevent Britain from being marginalised," he wrote. "These efforts were not very successful."

The first target, France, was promising. Thatcher and Mitterrand got on well. They were both inherently nationalistic, they both wanted the powers of the Council of Ministers strengthened and those of the European Parliament kept in check and, as nuclear powers, they had obvious common interests.

But UK governments, in a seamless line from Thatcher to Blair, have been unable to lure the French away from the Germans even with British cuisine, the latest in London culture and the view from the Canary Wharf tower. Despite their obvious common interests (as net contributors to the EU budget, promoters of enlargement and NATO enthusiasts), the British have also been unsuccessful in their attempts to seduce the Germans.

As Cradock put it: "Britain had arrived too late or couldn't bid high enough."

Major feature. The prospect of a defeat for Chancellor Kohl in the German general election on 27.9.98 is forcing Paris to reassess the balance of power within the EU. See also Sections 3.3.c and 3.3.d.