France stresses value of social welfare policy

Date: 28/03/1996

FRANCE this week clarified its wish-list for the Intergovernmental Conference, with both President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Alain Juppé urging their EU partners to agree on a common definition of a “European social model”.

In a two-page article published by the left-leaning newspaper Libération, Chirac set out his priorities for the IGC which opens this weekend in Turin.

While repeatedly stressing the role of the nation state, the French president called for closer cooperation in defence and foreign policy matters, and reaffirmed his commitment to monetary union in 1999. The Council of Ministers, Chirac wrote, should “recover its central position in the European architecture”, while the Commission should “stick to its role”.

But in a move bound to meet with massive opposition from the UK and even from France's close partner Germany, the policy statement, titled “For a European social model”, culminates in a vigorous plea for increased harmonisation of EU social standards and fresh spending to step up the fight against unemployment.

“It is time to build a Europe which reassures and protects, a Europe which reinforces its cohesion and allows its peoples to forge ahead,” Chirac wrote.

Speaking to his Gaullist party's national council, Juppé announced France would present its EU partners with an IGC memorandum stressing the value of the European welfare state, the “French concept of public service” and the need to focus EU spending on fighting unemployment.

In a thinly-veiled swipe at the Dutch government's liberal drugs policy, both Chirac and Juppé called for a common European stance in the fight against drugs, with Chirac suggesting that EU leaders use a summit to “solemnly commit themselves to forbid the production and commerce of any sort of drug, without any exception”.

Chirac's relentless attacks on the Dutch government's unorthodox approach to the drugs problem increasingly threaten to lead to a serious diplomatic crisis between the two EU partners. In an unusually blunt rebuke, Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok declared in a television interview that “there is no talking to him (Chirac) in a reasonable manner on this subject. He is highly emotional about it and in my view not balanced.”

In a clear bid to increase the pressure on The Hague, the French government meanwhile announced it would partially comply with the Schengen Agreement and end its passport controls on the border with Spain and Germany, but not with Belgium and Luxembourg. The reason, said French European Affairs Minister Michel Barnier, was “the particular problem of the fight against the traffic and consumption of drugs from the Netherlands”.