(…) “The real
fear at the back of the French government’s mind is that anything
it says or does will be a gift to Marine Le Pen and her far-right
National Front. As it is, she is the favourite to win control of the
northern French region at elections next month. A canny tactician, Ms
Le Pen knows that she scarcely needs to murmur a word to win support:
images of refugees snaking their way across Balkan fields, or washing
up in boats on Greek shores, do the work for her. Mrs Merkel urgently
needs other European states to share the refugee burden. Whatever Mr
Hollande’s reservations, he has neither the force nor the
inclination to defy her.”
The
dispensable French
France
has less and less influence in the EU, and fears to use what it still
has
Nov 7th 2015 /
CHARLEMAGNE
BACK in September,
as Germany struggled to cope with the politics and logistics of the
greatest influx of refugees in modern history, France decided to put
on a show of European solidarity. French bureaucrats, armed with
Arabic translators and loudspeakers, chartered three coaches and set
off for the German city of Munich. The idea was to fill the vehicles
with refugees and drive them over the Rhine to France, thus easing
Germany’s load. The French had planned to fetch some 1,000
asylum-seekers. But in the end, only a few hundred could be persuaded
to climb on board. It seemed they were not interested in French
solidarity; they wanted to live in Germany. The coaches left
half-empty.
The pattern was a
familiar one. As Europe has scrambled to respond to the
ground-shifting events of the past few months—first the Greek
currency drama, now the refugee crisis—France has found itself
increasingly marginalised: at best a junior partner to Mrs Merkel, at
worst a mute spectator. With Greece teetering on the brink of
expulsion from the euro zone in July, Mr Hollande cajoled, consulted
and mediated. But it was Mrs Merkel’s word, after the best part of
a long night, that determined Greece’s fate.
The refugee exodus
finds France on Europe’s sidelines again. When vast numbers of
migrants started to land on Mediterranean shores earlier this summer,
Mr Hollande refused to countenance the idea of national quotas to
share out the asylum-seekers. It was not until Mrs Merkel turned
Germany into a haven, earning accolades as the guardian of Europe’s
humanitarian spirit, that the French began to shift. By September Mr
Hollande went into reverse, backing a compulsory European quota
scheme after all. As fences went up and barbed wire was rolled out,
Mr Hollande—a protégé of Jacques Delors, architect of a
borderless Europe—stood quietly by. It was Mrs Merkel alone who
went off to Ankara last month to try to persuade the Turks to tighten
controls at their frontier with Europe. And it was she who then led
an emergency meeting in Brussels of countries along the “Balkan
route” favoured by migrants; France was not even present.
Up to a point, the
eclipse of France over refugees is the product of geography and
history. When Libya imploded a few years ago, and migrants took to
the western Mediterranean, France and Italy were on the front line.
This time, the surge happened in the east, far from French borders:
from Syria and Iraq via Turkey and the Aegean islands of Greece. If
anything, migrants’ ties of family, faith or tongue to towns in
Germany, Britain or Sweden, as well as better job prospects in those
places, have turned France into a country of transit, not a terminus.
Its greatest problem with refugees is in Calais, where some 6,000
migrants are camped out under plastic sheeting on muddy tracks—but
they are seeking to flee the French port, and make it through the
Channel tunnel to the stronger economy of Britain.
It would be wrong to
suggest that the French have quietly agreed to be Europe’s
bit-players. After all, Mr Hollande sought only one outcome from the
negotiations with Greece, and he secured it: that the country should
remain in the euro zone. The French president has since been arguing
for a number of ideas designed to strengthen the single currency,
such as a euro-zone parliament, budget and fiscal transfers. France
is also pushing for common European border guards. And the force of
joint Franco-German muscle still matters: it was not until the French
at last swung behind the idea of quotas that the policy took shape.
In some ways, an informal division of labour gives Germany the lead
within Europe, and France the lead outside it. Abroad, France brings
its military might to bear in ways that Germany would find
unthinkable (and which now eclipse Britain’s efforts): picking off
jihadists in the Sahel, or unloading bombs over Syria and Iraq. Its
efficient diplomatic corps is sparing no effort to try to secure a
binding global deal to curb carbon emissions at the Paris climate
talks, which start on November 30th.
The sound of silence
Ever since the
signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957, France has tied itself to
Germany on a simple understanding: that whatever divergences of
interests or policy the pair had, they would find a way to
co-operate. This used to mean compromising on an egalitarian basis.
But over the past decade, as economic weakness has enfeebled its
political hand and enlargement has diluted its power, France has
struggled to accept its diminished status. The growing imbalance was
disguised only by the hyperactivity of Nicolas Sarkozy, Mr Hollande’s
predecessor. Today, Mr Hollande’s unimposing presidency has exposed
the French to the uncomfortable reality of a German-led Europe. Faced
with Germany’s unilateral policymaking over the migrant crisis, the
French have found themselves wrong-footed, and silenced.
The French
government’s response, suggests François Heisbourg of the
Foundation for Strategic Research, a think-tank, can be summed up in
the common French term tétanisé (derived from the muscle-tightening
disease tetanus, or lockjaw). France has said as little as possible
about migrants, and done even less. It has agreed to accept just
24,000 asylum-seekers, less than a third of the capacity of its
national football stadium. Since the beginning of September, Germany
has taken in some 500,000.
The real fear at the
back of the French government’s mind is that anything it says or
does will be a gift to Marine Le Pen and her far-right National
Front. As it is, she is the favourite to win control of the northern
French region at elections next month. A canny tactician, Ms Le Pen
knows that she scarcely needs to murmur a word to win support: images
of refugees snaking their way across Balkan fields, or washing up in
boats on Greek shores, do the work for her. Mrs Merkel urgently needs
other European states to share the refugee burden. Whatever Mr
Hollande’s reservations, he has neither the force nor the
inclination to defy her. But he steps in to bail her out at his
peril.
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