[A-List] EU integration struggles: UK/France tiff

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Analysis: Another undiplomatic spat in history of a relationship riven by
resentment and rivalry
Plus ça change - the row between Blair and Chirac is just the latest in a
partnership that has all too often been anything but cordial
By John Lichfield in Paris
The Independent, 31 October 2002

There is no row like an Anglo-French row. Foes or nominal friends, we have
been going for each other at the slightest excuse for more than 1,000 years.

Or rather, recently we have mostly been going for them. We enjoy nothing
more than to have new reasons to hate the French. Les Francais , for their
part, seem mostly bored or politely amused by the episode but that is
probably just another example of their treachery.

Until this month, we were apparently running out of ammunition. The froggies
had deflated our righteous indignation (treachery again) by promising to
close the Sangatte refugee camp and eat British beef. There was always Iraq,
of course, but that was always a complicated, broadsheet quarrel. A proper,
post-modern Anglo-French row needs to engage the tabloid heavy artillery,
bombarding the French as an entire nation of beret-wearing, unwashed,
snail-eating, swarthy, bandy-legged hypocrites (some wonderful footballers
and football managers excepted).

Fortunately, Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac, the French President, contrived
to have a verbal punch-up in Brussels just in time to fill the hiatus in
cross-Channel warfare.

What a cheek. The President of the rudest nation on earth dared to call our
sweet Prime Minister "very rude". President Chirac has now postponed a
Franco-British summit in Le Touquet in December where the two governments
were to discuss, among other things, a project that might make Admiral Lord
Nelson spin on the top of his column.

There is a tentative plan for the two countries to develop and build
together a new generation of aircraft carriers. Has this plan now met its
Trafalgar? Probably not. The 1,000-year history of our quarrels is also a
1,000-year history of long-term national interests - and fundamental shared
interests - finally reasserting themselves over real or exaggerated national
differences.

In many respects, Franco-British relations are excellent. In recent weeks,
the new French government has defused two long-standing disputes between
Paris and London: the illegal French ban on British beef and the Sangatte
camp near Calais. Until recently, the two governments were even co-operating
behind the scenes on the US-Iraq crisis.

Officials in London, Paris and Brussels are, privately, astonished that two
grown politicians should quarrel like fish-wives over such a standard piece
of EU furniture as a Franco-British dispute on farm spending. On exactly the
same subject President Chirac - then Prime Minister Chirac - said in a stage
whisper at an EU summit in Brussels in 1987: "Does she [Margaret Thatcher]
want my balls too?" This was treated at the time as a minor incident, not a
cause for the kind of vituperation seen in the British press in recent days
(which the French are convinced has been deliberately stoked by Downing
Street). By contrast, the conservative, Chirac-supporting newspaper Le
Figaro headed its witty and fair editorial on the subject: "A little quarrel
between friends."

Against this background, the origins of the Blair-Chirac quarrel are at once
obvious and somewhat mysterious.

Taking the obvious causes first, one can trace the recurrent patterns of
Franco-British disputes, which go back respectively to Napoleon (at least)
and Charles de Gaulle.

Nothing was set in concrete in the negotiations in Brussels last week. The
whole question of how the enlargement of the EU to the east should be funded
remains open. In the end - that is, some time after 2006 - France will have
to accept less funding for its farmers and Britain will have to accept a
lower EU rebate. Everyone knows that. Why such a high-profile quarrel? Mr
Blair, who has staked a part of his reputation on putting Britain back at
the "heart of Europe", was evidently angry at the resurgence of the old
Franco-German recipe to pre-cook EU deals.

Fear of continental combinations has driven British policy since the 18th
century. But why take that out on Mr Chirac, rather than Chancellor Gerhard
Schröder? The Prime Minister lectured President Chirac - in a rather
sanctimonious way, according to French officials - on the iniquities of the
EU farm policy and its responsibility for damaging agriculture in the Third
World. (In fact, the CAP, though still wrong-headed, is already much
reformed and does not generate the market-distorting surpluses that it once
did.) President Chirac took exception to Mr Blair's remarks, partly because
he had been already irritated by what he regarded as the preaching tone of
the Prime Minister's comments on Iraq a few days earlier. Mr Blair had said
that Britain would join America in using force against Baghdad, even if the
UN failed to agree a tough new resolution against Saddam Hussein.

At a time when a French compromise plan was gaining ground in the Security
Council in New York, Mr Chirac regarded Mr Blair's intervention as deeply
unhelpful.

This fits a persistent pattern of modern cross-channel mesententes , which
goes back to the awkward wartime relationship between Winston Churchill and
De Gaulle. Should Britain, when the chips are down, side with France and
Europe; or with the United States? During the war, Churchill helped to
create De Gaulle as a symbol of French resistance but grew infuriated with
Le Généralwhen he insisted on defining, and defending, French interests, in
conflict with allied ones. At one point, Churchill agreed an American plan
to dump De Gaulle and had to be restrained by members of the British war
cabinet.

De Gaulle carried the grudge after the war. He vetoed Britain's first
attempt to join the Common Market in 1963, saying London would always side
with the American view of the world, and not help to build an alternative
European vision. The Blair-Chirac quarrel is directly in line of descent
from the Churchill-De Gaulle and McMillan-De Gaulle quarrels of the past.

Yet the Brussels slanging match is also mysterious, in the way that personal
chemistry between two people is always mysterious. This seems, to a large
extent, to have been a spat between two men, rather than between two
governments.

Both men have come to regard themselves (with some justice on both sides) as
important international players in the US-Iraqi chess game. At first, they
co-operated behind the scenes reasonably well. Mr Blair was America's
all-purpose friend. Mr Chirac was America's frank critic and admirer. Both
roles were useful and both helped to pull Washington away from instant war
and towards the UN.

In recent days, Mr Blair and Mr Chirac appear to have become increasingly
jealous and wary of one another's role in the Iraqi crisis.

This is partly based on a real divergence of view and partly on mutual
jealousy. One would-be international statesman and fixer in Europe is all
very well. Two is a crowd.