September 18, 2007
Is it true, as his American and European admirers proclaim, that France’s youthful, hyperactive president Nicolas Sarkozy has taken the leading role on Europe’s stage after just over 100 days in office? And that as the International Herald Tribune headlined, is now “the new EU power broker,” while single-handedly improving trans-Atlantic relations and enhancing France’s image and role in the world?
Even for critical political leaders and observers, the answer is apparently yes, notably in France. But questions about his leadership are being raised increasingly.
Consider the mystifying personality of France’ s 52 year-old president, son of a Hungarian immigrant, who, wherever he is, with seemingly-boundless energy and informality, constantly puts forth new ideas, new approaches, new faces, unafraid of coming across as pro-American, pro-Israel, pro-Lybia, anti-Iran, anti-Turkey; amid tough crackdowns on youth crime and illegal immigrants at home. Hardly a day goes by without Sarkozy affirming that he is daringly breaking with France’s past to create a new, powerful role for France in Europe, while unabashedly promoting the nation’s business expansion at home and abroad as the way to reviving France’s sluggish economy. In recent weeks, he has also been doing his best to further weaken, if not destroy, France’s deeply-divided Socialist party, following its crippling defeat in the May-June presidential and legislative elections. Shrewdly, he has given its leaders governmental jobs or assignments, notably Bernard Kouchner, his foreign minister and Jack Lang, former culture minister, while actively, internationally, supporting former finance minister and popular, Socialist presidential hopeful, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, for the top job at the International Monetary Fund in Washington. But appearances and claims can be illusive and the realities more complex. Indeed, they cannot be faced convincingly or applied by highly-publicized, measured, powerful statements, admiring, upbeat scenarios alone. For as Sarkozy’s arch-rival for the presidential nomination and former prime and foreign minister has declared publicly – yes, one can praise Sarkozy’s “omnipresence” and “energy” as almost everyone does, but, he asks repeatedly, where are the results? Others are now beginning to openly ask the same question.
Frontal attacks on Sarkozy’s visible, authoritarian style and methods are still rare in the mainstream French media, but are slowly beginning to surface. His handling, sometimes with tongue-lashing, his tightly-controlled cabinet officers, dubbed “ghosts” in a cover story in Marianne magazine on “La Cour,” (September 1-7) suggests a modern French monarchy rather than a government. For example, Sarkozy’s top aide at the Elysée Palace, on national television, firmly corrected Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, a highly-respected, influential US-trained lawyer and trade negotiator, for using the word “rigor” to describe the government’s economic policy, rather than “revitalization.” The newsweekly L’Express in another, long cover story (August 23) headlined its editorial on him as a leader on “Une bicyclette sans freins,” a bike without brakes, concluding he may wind up looking like “a simple clown.” In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel and her colleagues in Berlin are not hiding their annoyance at the French leader’s grandstanding, at their expense, and of the European Commission and the European Union Council of Ministers. They cite his recent assertions that France is prepared to take the lead in finding peaceful solutions to the Iraq war by becoming the “mediator.” And then claiming as Kouchner put it on a brief visit to Baghdad in August, that Iraq was “expecting something” from France. That claim was quickly brushed off by many Iraqis, and left many EU leaders angry that there had been no coordinated consultations with the EU, Britain and Germany, among others, beforehand. Meantime, Merkel, her ministers, opposition and EU leaders have openly challenged Sarkozy’s repeated calls for a euro devaluation that drew considerable support in France. He said his goal was easing unfair pressure on France’s exports and a high trade deficit. (Germany, with the same currency, they note, has a large surplus).
But the challenges also extend to his statements urging political control by EU member governments of the European Central Bank. She, ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet and a good number of EU finance ministers, insist repeatedly that the ECB must, like the US Federal Reserve Bank, remain independent. Trichet termed Sarkozy’s proposal “unacceptable.” Josef Jaffe, editor of the highly-respected Die Zeit recently warned of a “creeping collision” between Paris and Berlin over the future of European institutions. Sarkozy’s equally-adamant calls for creating a Mediterranean Union, grouping the EU with neighbouring governments on the Mediterranean Sea, stretching from Morocco to Egypt, received a major blow earlier this month: France’s former Socialist prime minister, Michel Rocard disclosed on a radio interview last week that he had refused Sarkozy’s offer to head its steering group on the grounds that it would most certainly lead to “a conflict with Europe,” noting that the EU already has longstanding, cooperative programs in the region. That rebuff also reflected growing opposition to the French proposal in Brussels, where European Commission officials see it as part of Sarkozy’s continuing attempts to derail ongoing negotiations with Ankara for Turkey’s EU membership, claiming Turkey is not “European.”
Despite such controversial, impersonal reactions, nearly everyone contacted for this article readily concedes that he still has the overwhelming support of admiring French men and women. They sincerely like him and the way he is running the government. Approval ratings are the highest of any French president since General Charles de Gaulle – around 70%, according to the latest surveys at the end of August.
Even higher scores, some in the 80% range, emerge when the French are asked about toughening laws on criminality, reducing some taxes; and regarding the highly-publicized role of his attractive, illusive wife and former fashion model, Cecelia, who in July helped secure the release of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor following eight years of imprisonment and torture in Libya; a move widely-criticized in Germany and Brussels, where the European Commission, for months, had been actively, successfully negotiating their release and were close to a final agreement with the Libyan leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi.
Another survey in mid-August, asked about the future of French-US relations, just prior to Sarkozy’s brief, highly-publicized visit to picnic at the family home of President George W. Bush in Maine, while vacationing at a nearby, posh, New Hampshire resort.
Some 40% of those surveyed said trans-Atlantic relations should remain unchanged; some 26% said that France should continue distancing itself from the US, a percentage that edges up to 32% among members and supporters of the Socialist party.
As if to reinforce the majority opinion, Sarkozy, as on previous occasions, warmed up to President Bush, enthusiastically supporting most of his policies, while deliberately avoiding any discussion about the Iraq War and whether or not France would support a military strike against Iran as punishment for its refusal to stop development of a nuclear military weapons system, which Sarkozy, like Bush, adamantly oppose and are determined to stop, including by possible use of military force.
When they meet again, most likely in Washington at the end of this month, they are expected to continue cultivating their warming, trans-Atlantic relations – in sharp contrast to the tense, hostility-tainted relationship between Bush and Sarkozy’s predecessor, Jacques Chirac that stemmed from France’s oppositions to the administration’s launch of the Iraq war and also touched off a wave of anti-France demonstrations that have virtually disappeared.
Is this leading Europe? Where is there a clear response to a warning made in a report to Sarkozy earlier this month by former Socialist foreign minister Hubert Védrine? The former top advisor to President Francois Mitterrand, suggests that France should stick to a Gaullist foreign policy, remaining independent of the US, avoiding an “Atlanticist and West-focused temptation,” such as returning France totally to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from which de Gaulle withdrew four decades ago, a move that would delight Bush and which the Elysée is considering.
The darkest cloud on the horizon – which Alain Duhamel, a highly-respected French author-journalist terms Sarkozy’s “biggest defeat so far” – is the nation’s slowing economic growth. Last week, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, announced that its economists had cut their estimate of GNP growth this year to 1.8% from 2.2%, compared to a revised 2.6% for Germany, citing slowing domestic demand and rising deficits.
Sarkozy and his ministers immediately challenged the OECD, insisting that with regard to stimulating growth, “I won’t wait for it, but will go out and find it.”
With labour unions challenging planned spending cuts and planned streamlining of government-supported pension schemes, including by massive strikes in coming weeks, the outlook for smooth sailing has, nevertheless somewhat darkened – at home. How does he feel about things? In a best-selling account of encounters between Sarkozy and the author, Yasmina Reza, France’s leading modern playwright, translated as “Dawn evening or night,” she asks him if he is content. Yes, he replies, “but I’m not joyful.”
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