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By Michel
Leclercq
French
President Jacques Chirac’s attendance at the EU summit in Brussels
Thursday and Friday was his farewell on the European stage after 12
years in power.
Seven weeks
from the French presidential election the 74-year-old Chirac is
predicted to announce, in the days following the summit, that he
will not seek a third term, ending a half-century career at the
heart of French politics.
For Chirac,
the two-day European Union summit follows a series of farewells, to
Africa at a major France-Africa gathering last month, and to French
farmers, whose cause he has long championed, at an annual
agriculture fair in Paris.
Although
strictly speaking Chirac will meet European leaders again in Berlin
on March 25, the 50th anniversary of Europe’s founding treaty of
Rome, this is his last real chance to leave a mark on European
policy-making.
EU leaders
were poised on Friday to make an ambitious commitment to tackling
climate change—a question on which Chirac has sought to show
global leadership, calling last month for a worldwide “green
revolution.”
“More than
ever, the president made sure this was a normal European summit:
meaning deployed the same energetic activism on all topics,” said
a French diplomat in Brussels.
Chirac has cut
a forceful, colorful presence at EU gatherings over the years,
whether clashing swords with successive British prime ministers over
farm policy, or attacking European supporters of the US-led war in
Iraq.
A Euro-sceptic
30 years ago, Chirac now argues that a united Europe is the only
possible counterweight to domination by the United States and
emerging powers such as China and Brazil.
But his
mandate was severely clouded by his failure to rally French support
for the European constitution—rejected in a 2005 referendum that
left the expanding bloc in a state of paralysis and struggling to
define its mission.
Since the
French “no” vote, France’s European partners have been
counting down to the French election, hoping Chirac’s successor
will bring a new chance of a breakthrough, according to diplomats in
Brussels.
The three main
French candidates—right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy, Socialist Segolene
Royal and the emerging centrist Francois Bayrou—say securing a
deal on a constitutional treaty is a top priority.
Sarkozy has
called for a scaled-down mini-treaty that could be ratified by
parliament, while his rivals want to call a new referendum after
amending the existing treaty: adding a stronger social component in
Royal’s case, paring it down to simplify it in Bayrou’s.
In day-to-day
European dealings, Chirac will be most remembered for fighting
tooth-and-nail against any reform of the EU farm subsidy system—of
which France is the biggest beneficiary—that could harm French
farmers.
Last weekend
he renewed an attack on Europe’s negotiator in global trade talks,
Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, accusing him of offering
concessions matched neither by Washington nor by developing nations.
Many EU
leaders hope France’s next president will be more flexible on the
Common Agricultural Policy—by agreeing for example to
renationalize some farm subsidies—paving the way for a deal at the
World Trade Organization.
Another
question mark is where Chirac’s successor will take France’s
relationship with Germany—long seem as the “motor” of European
construction.
Chirac enjoyed
close ties with Germany’s former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder,
which helped consolidate the Franco-German bond, but the
relationship has not carried over to Schroeder’s successor Angela
Merkel.
“There will
be some urgent catching-up to do after the presidential election to
relaunch the France-German relationship,” warned Ulrike Guerrot,
of the German Marshall Fund (GMF), a group working to encourage
Europe-US cooperation.
Keenly aware
of this fact, both French election frontrunners have traveled to
Germany—Sarkozy last month and Royal this week—to meet Merkel
and discuss their project for Europe.
 --AFP
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