Charlemagne: Europe’s battling twosome

The usual Jacques 'n' Tony punch-up in Brussels

IT HAS become a familiar routine. There is a European Union summit; a row breaks out between Jacques Chirac and Tony Blair; a little later, the two men patch things up. But with Jacques and Tony - as with Punch and Judy - any truce is strictly temporary. It is never all that long before they are back hitting each other over the head with rolling-pins.

So it was last week, at the latest EU get-together in Brussels. Mr Blair went into the summit determined to be nice to Mr Chirac. The French president is facing big trouble at home, where the opinion polls increasingly suggest that the French may vote down the new EU constitution in a referendum on May 29th. Much of the French opposition has focused on the so-called “Bolkestein directive ” - -a plan to liberalise trade in services. Mr Chirac needed his colleagues to promise to rewrite the directive; Mr Blair and his fellow leaders duly obliged. The British prime minister was thus distinctly unamused when Mr Chirac used his closing press conference to question “the British cheque”, the much-cherished rebate that Britain gets on its contributions to the EU budget. By the time he had got back to London, Mr Blair's irritation was plain. Speaking to the House of Commons, he painted the French in general as reactionaries clinging to a failing economic model.

The two leaders still claim (a trifle implausibly) to get on well personally. Mr Chirac has taken an avuncular interest in Leo, Mr Blair's youngest son, and has even been given a photograph of the infant. But, however warm may be their personal feelings, it has become clear that there is a structural conflict built into the Chirac-Blair relationship. They have diametrically opposed visions of how the EU should evolve, and they are engaged in a struggle over which should prevail.

The Blairite vision is Atlanticist, economically liberal, suspicious of deeper political integration and strongly in favour of further enlargement of the EU to include Turkey and others. Mr Chirac, by contrast, wants to build up the EU as a counterweight to America and has become deeply suspicious of Brussels's liberalising tendencies. Unlike most of his compatriots, however, Mr Chirac has steadfastly supported Turkey's bid for EU membership - perhaps realising that his aim to turn the EU into a world power can work only if it grows in size.

In other respects, though, there is little doubt that EU enlargement has greatly weakened Mr Chirac's entire European strategy, while providing a boost to Mr Blair. In the EU of 15 that existed until 2004, it was still possible for the Franco-German duo to dominate. With the addition of ten more countries, most of them inclined to share Mr Blair's pro-American, economically liberal views, the power balance has shifted markedly. Mr Chirac's frustration with this new situation became evident in the run-up to the Iraq war, when his claim to speak for Europe in his opposition to the war was undermined by the sight of almost all the countries from the “new Europe” lining up on the Anglo-American side. At the time it was reckoned that 16 EU countries were backing Mr Blair and only nine were with Mr Chirac.

The Iraq war may have offered the most graphic illustration of the shift in power within the enlarged EU, but there have been others. In December 2001, when EU leaders were choosing a president for their constitutional convention, Mr Chirac was still able to force through his candidate: Valery Giscard d'Estaing, a previous French president. In mid-2004, however, the Franco-German pair were no longer able to impose on an EU of 25 their preferred candidate, Belgium's Guy Verhofstadt, as president of the European Commission. Instead, José Manuel Barroso, a former Portuguese prime minister who is both an economic liberal and was a supporter of the Iraq war, got the job. Mr Barroso is now being demonised in France in much the same way as Jacques Delors, a French predecessor, was once demonised in Britain - as a Brussels bureaucrat who is seeking to impose alien and dangerous ideas.

The change of atmosphere within the commission illustrates the shift in the EU balance of power away from Mr Chirac and towards Mr Blair. But the game is far from over. His travails over Iraq have tarnished Mr Blair's image in Europe. Last year's change of government in Spain gave Mr Chirac an important new ally in the shape of José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, a Spanish socialist who really is socialist. If Silvio Berlusconi were replaced by Romano Prodi in Italy next year, the Chirac wing would gain another ally - although if Angela Merkel also defeats Gerhard Schroder in Germany, she might tack towards the Blair camp.

The new members of the EU in central Europe are not necessarily permanent adherents of the Blair side, either. Several have had second thoughts about Iraq. And they all want to join the European single currency, from which Britain has stood aside. But if Blairite prestige suffered because of Iraq, high unemployment in France has damaged Mr Chirac, whereas the relative economic dynamism of Britain has strengthened Mr Blair.

Constitutional concerns

In their continuing struggle for leadership and influence within the European Union, both the British and French leaders now face identical challenges: the need to win a domestic referendum on the EU constitution. Until a few weeks ago, it looked as if Mr Blair would come off worst. Britain is not due to vote until the first half of next year, and British officials had been bracing themselves for the nightmare in which the 24 other EU countries ratify the constitution and only Britain says no. But the shift in the polls in France has now put the pressure back on Mr Chirac. He himself has argued that a French rejection of the constitution would be a grave blow to his country's prestige and influence within the EU. It might also allow Mr Blair to cancel his own, even trickier referendum in Britain: “a two for one deal”, as one beaming British official puts it.

Commentary feature. Discusses the continuing tensions between Jacques Chirac and Tony Blair over a range of issues but essentially over conflicting visions of how the EU should evolve.

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