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| Will the real Sarkozy please stand up? |
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| Wednesday, 13 June 2007 | |
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The arrival of Nicolas Sarkozy as President in sole charge of French foreign policy ought to mean big changes. However, it is no longer clear what his policy is. In particular, his recruitment of Socialist Bernard Kouchner as Foreign Secretary has considerably confused the situation. In a complete break with Chirac’s policy, Sarkozy has said that he is against Turkish membership of the European Union because Turkey is not in Europe. If Turkey is admitted, he asks, why not Israel or the North African states? He argues that the entry of Turkey would be the end of a political Europe and that the countries which really want Turkey in, like Britain for instance, are against a deeper political European Union. To have a political entity, he believes that the EU must have fixed and limited boundaries otherwise it will just become “a sub-division of the United Nations”. Instead, he is proposing that Turkey is granted a privileged partnership and membership of a new Mediterranean association. So far so clear… but his new European and Foreign Affairs Minister Bernard Kouchner is openly in favour of Turkish entry. Difficult to believe that the Turkey question was not raised when his appointment was being discussed. Sarkozy is in favour of a mini-treaty to solve the EU’s decision-making problems now that it has 27 members as he stressed on his early trip to Brussels. He wants to introduce a mild form of majority voting but no referendum on the subject. Kouchner voted for Ségolène Royal in both rounds of the presidential elections. She favours a referendum and hesitates to abandon negotiations with Turkey after years of EU promises. Cynics suggest that Sarkozy knows that Turkish entry does not have to be decided for ten or fifteen years by which time he will no longer be president. He will have to be careful not to wriggle too obviously on Turkish entry or he will enrage a large section of his closest supporters. Meanwhile, the Turks may decide they have had enough of European dithering and decide not to join anyway. Sarkozy wrote in his book ‘Témoignage’: “At the risk of seeming naïve in the eyes of cynics, I believe in the need to preserve, to represent and to defend our values in international exchanges. In other words, I do not believe in the realpolitik that would have it that we should forget our principles in the name of higher economic interests.” His appointment of Kouchner, who really believes that fighting injustice is all that matters, is a clear move to follow that sort of ethical foreign policy. While Kouchner was talking in Paris, on a completely different tack, one of Sarkozy’s henchmen and an unofficial spokesman, UMP député Pierre Lellouche gave an interview to the Russian paper ‘Nezavissimaïa Gazeta’ in which he said: “For Nicolas Sarkozy, foreign policy can only follow the principles of ‘realpolitik’ but the values to which France is attached since the Revolution must not be forgotten, in other words the values of liberty.” He went on to say: “France seeks to develop the closest possible relations with the United States in the same way as with Russia; both are our friends.” However, he then added that he saw no problem with the setting up of a US missile shield in Poland which the Russians bitterly oppose. It is not just the Russians who must be wondering what is going on. Just to remind the new President that an ethical foreign policy has a price, Europe’s leading gas companies, including Gaz de France, have issued a warning to Europe’s new leaders Merkel and Sarkozy. “Russia is our neighbour -we should take energy on its own merits and not let the political climate affect it,” said Jean-Marie Devos, secretary general of Eurogas, the industry’s trade association. “It’s about long-term contracts, infrastructure, joint ventures and asset swaps,” claimed Uwe Fip of E.ON Rurhgas. Not exactly music to the ears of the humanitarian Kouchner, founder of Médecins sans frontières. A further ambiguity is the appointment of Jean-Pierre Jouyet as Junior Minister for Europe reporting directly to Kouchner. Sarkozy has previously said that only if the minister for Europe is a senior member of the government can European policy be successfully conducted. In ‘Témoignage’ he said it should be the Prime Minister who was responsible for European affairs. Speaking after his appointment, Jouyet said, “I do not think I am a minister on the right. I have remained true to my beliefs.” A relatively obscure public figure, no one really knows what his beliefs are except that he was once a supporter of Jacques Delors. It remains to be seen what the new president means when he talks about defining Europe’s borders. Would he like to include Ukraine, Georgia and Belarus under a more acceptable government? This would please his friends in America who regard the EU as the political arm of Nato. This would please his friends in America who regard the EU as the political arm of Nato. It would gravely displease Russia, tactfully handled by Chirac resisting US pressure to expand Nato ever closer to Moscow. Unlike Chirac, he has said that he is in favour of Georgia joining Nato. And unlike Chirac he has also said that France should speak out clearly against human rights abuses in Chechnya. However, he does not seem to favour speaking out clearly against human rights abuses in Iraq and other areas where the US is involved. Here he favours a ‘softly softly’ approach. It is all very confusing. Once his political honeymoon is over, the new president may start to get problems from his own most enthusiastic admirers. Foreign policy is the one area where Chirac was generally respected by his supporters. In particular too close identification with the Americans will soon cause trouble. |
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