In the U.K referendum of 2016, the case for Brexit was
essentially about “taking back control”. Many years before, a London taxi
driver had explained to me, repeating the mantra of Margaret Thatcher at the
time, that “Europe” was fine but that a “federal Europe” was out of the
question. It seems therefore worthwhile
exploring the extent to which the European project in general is indeed federal
and whether France in particular is keen on a federal Europe, a concept that
the UK has always rejected, even before the fateful referendum of June 2016.
The influence that France has always sought to exert over
the rest of Europe has strong historical roots. Only going back as far as
Napoleon Bonaparte, his German, Italian, Austrian, and Russian campaigns of the
early 1800s were intended to produce a federation of Europe, with members of
his own family in charge of its component parts. Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian
general who theorised the philosophy of war in his major work “On War”, was so influenced in his outlook
by Napoleon’s campaigns, that he encapsulated their essence in famous phrases
like, “War is therefore the use of force to impose one’s will on an adversary” (“Der
Krieg ist also ein Akt der Gewalt, um den
Gegner zur Erfüllung unseres Willens zu zwingen”) and “War
is simply the pursuit of political ends with other means” (“Der Krieg ist
eine bloße Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln”). It is an irony of
history that in the 20th century, Germany itself, under the Nazis, would also
set out to put these ideas into practice.
The European Union, as it has now become, was designed precisely to banish
war forever as a means by which European countries could pursue political ends.
But the gradual process of European construction has not put an end to France’s
political ambitions in Europe. Far from it. For its part, Germany, sometimes
characterised as an economic giant but a political pygmy, is still living with
the political and psychological consequences of its recent history and
subsequent partition and has been reluctant to define and project any
European ambition. France has had no such qualms. But it is also striking to
observe that it has always taken grave exception to any post-war integrationist
agenda of which it disapproved, starting as early as 1954, when its Parliament
torpedoed the European Defence Community. And only a few years after the successful
establishment of The European Economic Community by The Treaty of Rome, built
around French agriculture and German industry, it was General de Gaulle who
simply refused to attend EU ministerial meetings for six months, for fear of
being outvoted, before accepting “the Luxembourg compromise” in 1966, which effectively
gives member states a veto over any decision if its “vital national interests” are
at stake. It was another French President, Valery Giscard d’Estaing, who succeeded
in upgrading the European Council to a highly effective tool of intergovernmental
cooperation to counter integrationist initiatives of the supranational
Commission. The European Council, that was enshrined in the EU’s institutional
machinery by the Lisbon treaty of 2007, is now the key body that sets its political
agenda and strategic direction. In
short, as far as France is concerned, the European project, it seems, can only advance
on French terms and as a result of intergovernmental agreement. Emmanuel Macron’s
current attempt to assume the political and intellectual leadership of the EU (see: “The Economist” - November 9th ) at a
time when Germany is temporarily weakened by the long drawn-out end of the
Merkel era and the UK is on its way out, is simply the latest example of a very
long-standing French ambition to forge Europe and its current incarnation, the
EU, in its own image.
But is that image one of a federal Europe? There are almost as many definitions
of federal as there are federal countries. The most obvious example is that of
the United States, but Brazil, Mexico as well as Germany and many others are also
federal in structure with different types of relationship between central government
on one hand and regional, state or provincial governments on the other. When
people use the word “federal” in the European context, they usually mean a
gradual process of greater integration and sovereignty pooling but the phrase “an
ever closer union….”, first enshrined in the preamble of the Treaty of Rome, is
sufficiently lofty sounding but at the same time sufficiently non-binding to
accommodate different visions of integration and an open-ended timetable. And
as far as France is concerned, as I have suggested above, further integration
can only come in small steps and in slow motion
- and, to the greatest extent possible, on French terms.
The major integrationist steps in the EU so far have been mainly economic, with
common policies on agriculture, trade and competition, among others, culminating
in a (partial) monetary union and open borders between some countries of the
Union, but not all. These policies have benefitted all member countries of the
EU in terms of GDP growth and per capita income. And in spite of its occasional
grumblings about “unfair competition”, particularly from the newer member
states, France is no exception. And yet all this is still very much work in
progress - economic and monetary union is far from complete and the current
negotiations about rounding it out with a banking union are difficult and will
be long drawn-out. The Schengen system has undoubtedly made life easier for
many EU citizens, particularly in France, that shares a land border with six
other European countries, five of them members of the EU. But in this sensitive
area of national sovereignty, the Union has repeatedly failed to define an
effective immigration policy and its external borders are, as everywhere, difficult
to police. It is also worthwhile noting that the U.K, years before the term Brexit
was even coined, opted out of both the Maastricht Treaty and the Schengen
agreement. Why worry, one might ask, about “taking back control” when the country
has already skilfully managed to sidestep the EU’s most decisive moves towards
greater integration?
More significantly though, France is caught in a dilemma between its stated
desire to pursue European construction and its profound nature as a centralised
nation state. Its history, at least since the reign of Louis XIV, has been one
of bringing its outlying regions like Brittany, Corsica, French Catalonia, and the
Savoy under the control of a centralised state. After the Revolution, that
centralised state became a centralised Republic, with its much-vaunted values of
liberty, equality and fraternity. And indeed, in pursuit of these “republican values”
centralisation is all pervasive in France. Prefects appointed by the central
government ensure that legislation voted by the Parliament in Paris is applied
uniformly in every corner of France, including its overseas territories. The National
Education Ministry administers a monolithic and supposedly egalitarian public education
system. A huge body of administrative law has been created and conflicts with
the administration are handled by administrative courts. The powers that municipal
mayors and local authorities do enjoy over local or regional matters can
quickly be overridden by national laws and regulations. In one recent and
telling example, the mayor of a small provincial town who had decided to ban crop
spraying within 150 meters of residential areas was overruled by an
administrative court enforcing a decree issued by the Ministry of Agriculture
in Paris. Even local powers of taxation can be removed at the stroke of an
imperious pen, as the recent government decision to phase out the locally important
“taxe d’habitation” shows – a move
that has left many local authorities in dire financial straits.
There are many other examples of central government’s heavy hand in
French society. The inevitable consequence of course is that whenever anything
goes wrong, anywhere, from street lighting in a blighted suburb to the closure
of a factory in a small town, the “state” is called upon by all concerned to
sort it out. A Financial Times correspondent
in France recently interviewed Priscillia Ludosky (FT Weekend November 1st)
one of the leading lights in the gilets
jaunes movement. She rehearsed once again the idea that many people in
France feel they are trapped in “left-behind communities” and that it was this
feeling that sparked the multiple demonstrations that started last November and
continue, with varying degrees of intensity, to this day. And yet, the specific
issues she pinpointed like inadequate child care facilities, lack of local
transport and potholes in streets are not the responsibility of central
government. They should normally and could realistically be solved by local
authorities.
As I have suggested in this blog before (“The state of the state” – April 2018) the French
centralised state would therefore have a lot to gain, in terms of efficiency
and acceptability, by embracing a more federalist approach and devolving real
power, including inalienable power to raise taxes, to the regional or local level
and concentrating on matters of national sovereignty like defence and security,
justice and immigration for which, even in a federal system, central government
is responsible. But for this to happen, France would have to break with its
long-standing centralising traditions. And as far as greater economic and
financial integration and steps towards a European security and defence policy are
concerned, examples of where future European cooperation may be focussed, the
central state would have to pool sensitive parts of its national sovereignty
with other nation states. It is hard to see either of these two developments
happening any time soon!
If there were still time for the U.K to wake up from its Brexit nightmare and
take a more dispassionate look at the progress of European construction, it
would find that the much-feared bogeyman of a “federal Europe” is nowhere on
the near horizon and that “ever closer union” will continue to be a very slow
and very tortuous process!
