CNN.com - Chirac lashes out at 'new Europe' - Feb. 18, 2003: French President Jacques Chirac has attacked eastern European countries hoping to join the EU, saying they missed a great opportunity to "shut up" when they signed letters backing the U.S. position on Iraq. France has been a leading voice against Washington's press for war in Iraq to disarm President Saddam Hussein and is insisting weapons inspectors in the country be given more time. But 13 countries either set to join the EU or in membership talks have signed letters supporting the United States. Chirac said: "These countries have been not very well behaved and rather reckless of the danger of aligning themselves too rapidly with the American position. It is not really responsible behavior. It is not well brought-up behavior. They missed a good opportunity to keep quiet. I felt they acted frivolously because entry into the European Union implies a minimum of understanding for the others," Chirac said. Chirac called the letters "infantile" and "dangerous," adding: "They missed a great opportunity to shut up."
My goodness.
You know, heads of state do not often tell other heads of state (or their foreign ministers) that their proper role in things is to just shut the hell up. Even Rumsfeld, for all his "old Europe" commentary, did not say that what France and Germany should have done was to "shut up." He just said that they were "a problem", which was just about as insulting. I daresay that since Rumsfelt was complimentary -- in his peculiar way -- to eastern Europe, Chirac felt it incumbent upon himself to insult them in the grievous way that France and Germany had been insulted, so that they could all bind together.
Apparently, Chirac feels that France is the head of the European Union (this, of course, would be a surprise to Brussels, as well as to Greece, which currently holds the presidency of the EU) , and as such, has the right to dictate to other independent countries. Unfortunately for him, they are independent countries and get rather testy about such things.
Below follows a pure digression from the main point.
The European Union is, frankly, something of a puzzlement, structurally, when you look at it from the outside. According to EUROPA The EU at a glance, apparently the EU's official public information site, the EU isn't meant to replace institutions or governments, yet countries cede sovereignty over certain institutions. How you manage a baroque combination of neither replacing institutions yet claiming sovereignty, I'm sure I don't know. Those are not really logically consistent positions. (A digression from the side note: as far as I can tell, the EU site contains no information whatsoever about the EU presidency. I'm sure it must be there, but it seems to be hidden deep inside.)
There is also a peculiar multiplication of the legislative and consultative structure. There's the Council of Europe, which seems to contain all European countries except Serbia and Montenegro (which seem to be "Special Guests", whatever that means), and Belarus. There's the Council of the European Union, from which the rotating EU presidency seems to be drawn. (And hey! a whole paragraph on said presidency!) There's the European Council, which the Heads of State or Government of the fifteen Member States of the European Union and the President of the European Commission. (Apparently, in EU terms, rather like the US Conference of Governors except that there technically aren't any US governors that could push The Button.) And there's the European Parliament.
The EU severely limits the authority and responsibilities of the EU president. The EU parliament is elected at five-year intervals, which is sensible enough, but according to the Hellenic EU Presidency site, the EU presidency itself rotates among the member states at six-month intervals. Seriously, what on earth can you possibly accomplish within six months? Even if the EU was set up along traditional parliamentary lines, where the president is the head of government and the prime minister is the head of state ... well, the EU doesn't seem to have a prime minister, for one thing. (I can't imagine most of the countries acceding to an EU prime minister with real authority and responsibility.) So, logically, the EU presidency must be more or less American-style, with combined responsibilities for both positions ... except with a six-month rotation, by the time you settle into the job well enough to understand all the responsibilities, they belong to someone else.
Seldom could an office have been more specifically designed to allow its holder to accomplish less. Even the governors of our Southern states -- which have notoriously weak governors, notoriously strong lieutenant governors, and typically split voting for each position -- have more authority and responsibility than that. But then, they get to hang around longer, too.
Ideally, it would seem, the roadmap for the Europeans is that the EU would eventually come to resemble the United States, in that they would have a unified foreign policy, and would agree on the proper use of the military of the component states -- maybe even have a common European military some years down the road. The problem with the roadmap is, they're starting very late in the game. The original 13 colonies of the US had, in fact, a very short existence as independent states under the Articles of Confederation, only about 12 years. Texas, as the Republic of Texas, is the only other part of the US that ever had any sort of independent existence where it had to deal with foreign affairs and military defense and all the things that nations normally handle. Europe's states have had, by contrast, hundreds, sometimes more than a thousand years of existence as independent states. They've gotten quite used to it. Thus, there isn't really a parallel between, say, the state of Illinois and the national state of Spain. Illinois does not have, and has never had, its own foreign policy, its own military defense (the state's national guard is essentially a state police force writ large, although there are both national and state administrative links). Spain, by contrast, has had a king or two, has had its own independent army, has had its own foreign policy. And trying to combine all of those elements into a unitary state, speaking with one voice, with one military, sharing the same interests ... it's going to be incredibly difficult. It's going to be made even more difficult if France insists on the concept that the EU exists to oppose the US, since most of the component states of the EU have no desire to oppose the US in the way that France seems to want. (And at the moment, most of Europe seems to like France little more than the US does.)
Posted by iain at February 18, 2003 04:27 PM
