France in a democratic Europe
John Ardagh
Paris A parched Paris is emptying fast for its usual long holidays by the sea, where at least some water remains. Among those still left in the capital, tempers are shortening and spirits wilting. Bus drivers have threatened to strike because their work is unbearably hot, and les aubergines—the purple-uniformed girl traffic wardens— have lost all energy to go round putting tickest on cars, and simply huddle in groups in what shade they can find. Most serious, mineral water is becoming hard to obtain, owing to the familiar Parisian habit of hoarding in time of crisis.
The heatwave has stifled the political furore that was blazing so merrily two or three weeks ago over such matters as the capital gains tax and the alleged shift in defence policy. Those f)oliticians and civil servants still at their desks—some of them risking their careers by actually keeping their jackets off when receiving senior visitors—have little spirit left for discussing the niceties of minimum oil prices or fishery limits. So it is no surprise that next Monday's quarterly 'European Council' summit in Brussels is arousing little interest. While the Elysee Palace is covered with scaffolding, as its Cotswold-gold stonework gets a wash and brush-up, there still seems little chance of a similar face-lift for its occupant's nearstalemated European policy, on which he had set such high hopes. His advisers speak gloomily of `no apparent solution in sight to the EEC impasse.'
Elysee officials assure me that the President was pleased with his visit to Britain. He got on better than he had expected with Mr Callaghan, and he sees the new plan for regular exchanges at all levels as a way both of countering growing German hegemony and of gradually coaxing the British into a more 'European' frame of mind. But no one has illusions that the latter process will be swift or easy. A Quai diplomat told me : 'We are glad that at least we now have the green light for closer contacts with senior Foreign Office people who—for instance Sir Michael Palliser—seem to be just about the only genuine "Europeansin Whitehall. Of course both nations defend their national interests, but at least we French are really going to collaborate'.
Another senior official said: 'The world economic crisis since 1973 may have helped to bring the EEC to its impasse, but this is no longer the true cause, for the crisis is clearing. The trouble simply is that governments, after all the year of wrangling, have lost faith in Europe and each is now laying its Own separate lines to the United States— crazy, seeing that the US virtually has no government. Nothing can change until there is a common will at the top level to rebuild Europe, and this seems hardly in sight.'
In this context, no one expects much from the Brussels summit, at least not in terms of moves towards economic or social integration. There may be some talk of further financial aid for Italy: but the feeling in Paris is that (a) Chancellor Schmidt will pose the condition that the Italian Communist Party must be firmly excluded from links with the next government; (b) Britain is hardly likely to want to help foot the bill ; and (c) Giscard, while not unsympathetic him-ielf to the compromesso storico, cannot possibly support it in public when he is about to face mortal combat with the French Communist Party.
The last summit, at Luxembourg in July, was a fiasco. If this one fails too, it will be a grave blow not only to the EEC but for Giscard himself, who invented these quarterly summits and did well with the first three. Happily, there is a deus ex machina at hand, in the form of the European direct elections issue. Giscard and Mr Callaghan are believed to have reached agreement in London on a compromise formula which they expect the other seven to endorse in Brussels, if it is tactfully presented. This would be something near to the 350 to 380 seat Strasbourg Parliament that several countries have proposed, and would guarantee minimum representation for the smaller nations while letting Mr Callaghan off his Celtic hook : Scotland could have more deputies than Ireland. If this issue is finally settled next week, as seems likely, the summit can be 'a success'.
For the first direct elections, perhaps in 1978, each country can choose its own method of voting and constituency carveup. It is recognised as unrealistic to expect nations with widely differing domestic electoral systems to harmonise their EEC voting pattern for the first round, though under the Treaty of Rome they must do so eventually. After the summit, the issue thus becomes a stormy domestic one for nearly every country. What kind of voting pattern is politically feasible ? In France, Giscard will have to face a battle on two fronts in order to get a direct elections project ratified by the Assembly. On the one hand, the Gaullists, suspicious, about such elections in any form, are insisting that the present non-proportional system should be copied, so as to ensure them a sizeable representation. On the other hand the Socialists are insisting on PR, without which they fear—rightly—they would be gravely under-represented. A large left-wing ele
ment in the Socialist Party, mostly the young bloods, is now in outright opposition to any form of direct elections in an EEC which they see as 'capitalist-dominated and anti-democratic'. However, Francois Mitterrand and his majority faction— including Defferre, Rocard, Mauroy—remain staunch Europeans at heart and for years have been campaigning for a more democratic basis for the EEC.
Which way will Giscard play it ? From his advisors I learn that he is inclining towards a semi-PR system that would secure the vote of the majority of the Socialists, even at the risk of infuriating the UDR. It is a calculated risk. But he is counting on the fact that diehard Gaullist opposition to Strasbourg at any price is confined to ten or fifteen deputies around Michel Debre, and that most of the UDR are not greatly concerned—Chirac in private has dismissed the Strasbourg Parliament as 1* Europe des bavards', totally irrelevant to France's urgent concerns, and he is said to have promised Giscard that he will dissuade the body of the UDR from sabotaging the President's harmless little European ploy, if that will please him. An added advantage of wooing the Socialists on this issue is that it will embarrass the left and split it down the middle, for the Communists, like the left wing of the Socialists, are opposed to direct elections. In any event, there will be a thunderous political battle on thz. issue later this year that may cut across party lines, and it will be a severe test not only for Giscard's liberalism (not in doubt) but for his nerve (less proven). He is not certain to win.
There remains of course the question of how far direct elections will finally appeal to the public imagination, and how far this new democratic mandate for Strasbourg will thus in fact succeed in breathing new life into the wilting European ideal. That can only be tested with time, and it, may depend less on the French than on the behaviour of the nation that allegedly spawned the Mother of Parliaments.
Giscard appears to be braving his Gaullist 'allies' not only over direct elections but on the even more important issue of defence. The ripples have not yet subsided from the tempest caused a month ago when the President and his defence Chief of Staff, General Miry, both came out in public apparently advocating a rather more pro-NATO and less `sanctuarise defence policy, including the possible use of French troops on Germany's eastern frontier. Gaullists I have met in Paris—including some close to the Gaullist Defence Minister, Yvon Bourges—appear to be bravely whilsting in the dark, asserting that French policy has not changed. But Giscard's closest advisors assure me that there has been a crucial change in what they call 'defence theology', if not yet in practice. The defence budget is to be stepped up by 50 per cent in real money over the next five years, and the main beneficiary will be conventional forces rather than the nuclear programme. On Giscard's own staff, and among his generals, there is a growing awareness that times have changed and that a go-it-alone policy, basically nuclear, is no longer enough for France's protection. G iscardiens even add that de Gaulle himself, were he still alive, would certainly have been realistic enough to come round to the same view by now. But the keepers of the sacred flame, such as Debre, do not see it that way, and nor do the Socialists who have been moving very close to the orthodox Gaullists on defence matters and especially on the primacy to be given to the force de frappe.
So there is a great debate, and some disquiet in Gaullist ranks. One Gaullist worry, widely voiced in private, is that Giscard is not only ignorant and naïve in defence matters but by indecision of temperament would never have the courage to press the nuclear button and therefore is moving back towards stronger conventional focres and greater reliance on the American 'shield.' Giscard's associates hotly deny that this is the reason for the shift of policy.
Some of them assert that in the next few months he will even have the courage to move back closer into NATO, with more pooling of arms production programmes and a return to joint manoeuvres. Other observers and officials in Paris doubt that .he would ever dare to do this, and stress that the new trend is likely to remain 'theology' rather than practice. Time will tell. But already Moscow has shown its alarm. There is some evidence that the Russians are preparing to withdraw from Giscard the support that they tacitly gave him at the time of his election two years ago, when they appeared to consider that a France under Giscard would be the best France for détente and thus for their own purposes. If they now switch to a more overtly antiGiscai-d stance, and to more open support for the French left, it could have strange and unforeseeable consequences in the coming French election campaign. Highly paradoxical, too, considering that the French Communists are busily bending over backwards to detach themselves from Moscow.
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