Hubert
Védrine: It’s time for ‘a European pause’
An
architect of EU integration says the push for more Europe is leading
people to reject it.
By PIERRE BRIANÇON
6/1/16, 5:32 AM CET
PARIS — The man
who once was the face of French diplomacy — and a key player in
European integration for almost 20 years — now says Europe needs a
time-out.
Hubert Védrine was
François Mitterrand’s trusted foreign policy adviser, and his
chief of staff in the last years of the French Socialist’s
presidency in the mid-1990s. He went on to become foreign minister
under the divided government of conservative President Jacques Chirac
and Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, from 1997 to 2002. He was
even approached by Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007 to serve yet another term
as foreign minister.
That means Védrine
was a big player in, not a mere witness to, the negotiations that led
to the Schengen agreement in 1985, and the launch of the European
monetary union in 1990. He had a front-row seat when Germany reunited
in 1990, when the USSR collapsed in 1991, and when the euro became
Europe’s common currency in 1999. Now, Védrine says, Europe needs
a pause.
In a series of
recent speeches, articles and interviews that have sometimes
infuriated his former comrades on the front lines of European
integration, Védrine, now 68, has been pushing the case that it’s
time for EU leaders to deal with the growing rejection of Europe by
voters and public opinion in general across the continent.
‘If you want
people to massively reject Europe, just keep on’
“In most countries
today you have 15 to 20 percent of voters who reject Europe
altogether, and another 15 to 20 percent that remain die-hard
Europhiles. That leaves at least 60 percent in the middle who are
what I’d call euro-allergic,” Védrine said in an interview with
POLITICO in his office overlooking the rows of trees lining the banks
of the Seine, in Paris’ 8th arrondissement. “Yet you see
governments and parties all over jumping up and down asking for ‘more
Europe, more Europe!’”
“If
you want people to massively reject Europe, just keep on,” he
added.
It may be strange to
hear one of the architects of Mitterrand’s diplomacy take such a
big step back from the enthusiasm the former president showed for
European integration, and the reaction in French political circles
has reflected that. Some of his former peers and other Mitterrand
confidantes — such as current National Assembly foreign affairs
committee chairwoman Elisabeth Guigou, who was once Mitterrand’s
European affairs minister — have been especially angered by his
recent statements.
But even some of
those who disagree with him acknowledge that Védrine has always been
lukewarm to the lyrical enthusiasm shown by some about all things
European. In 2000, right after his German counterpart Joschka Fischer
had proposed further European integration among a hard core of
countries willing to move forward, Védrine shot down the idea.
“European people, over the centuries, have suffered too much from
Pied Pipers who led them to cruel disappointment,” he said.
Realism, not
cynicism
A self-styled
“realist” in foreign policy, Védrine doesn’t belong to the
Wilsonian school of foreign policy. He’s more on the Kissinger
line: Countries have interests, they act to preserve them and
diplomacy is the art of compromise. Védrine shows little sympathy
for those he calls “human-rightists,” such as the man who finally
took on the foreign minister job under Sarkozy, Doctors Without
Borders founder Bernard Kouchner. And he has little appetite for the
ideological crusade he says the West embarked upon after the fall of
the Soviet Union. “It’s just not true that the Western model and
values appeal to all countries in the world,” he said.
Védrine refutes the
notion his views are “cynical.”
“That’s not what
realism is about,” he said. In a book out earlier this year, “Le
Monde Au Défi” (“Challenge to the World”) he defended the idea
that the so-called “international community” doesn’t exist —
either in politics or the economy. Nothing can fully transcend
national interests, he argues: not post-war ideals, nor post-Soviet
illusions, nor the globalized market.
The only area where
a common purpose could be found now, he argued, would be on
environmental issues. Summits on global warming, or preserving
biodiversity, offer the only real opportunities to overcome national
barriers, he told me.
Back in Europe,
Védrine said, the lyrical approach favored by integrationists “means
that you try to shame governments by always complaining about their
‘national selfishness’ etc. But these are legitimate national
interests we are talking about.”
The only man in
Europe who understands the problem, Védrine said, is Jean-Claude
Juncker, the current European Commission president. He said Juncker
once told him the story of an EU summit that debated a plan to save
water — and of the Commission bureaucrats who got to work without
waiting on a plan to regulate the form of shower heads throughout the
EU. That’s the type of regulatory zeal the U.K.’s Brexit
campaigners denounce as a sign that the EU has gone awry.
‘The
U.K. has all that’s good in Europe, and isn’t involved in the bad
stuff — Schengen and the euro. Why leave?’
Other EU leaders
also seem to have woken up to the risk of European over-reach.
European Council President Donald Tusk told a gathering of the
center-right European People’s Party Monday night in Luxembourg
that insistence on more Europe was fueling the rise of populism.
“Obsessed with the idea of instant and total integration, we failed
to notice that ordinary people, the citizens of Europe, do not share
our Euro-enthusiasm,” Tusk said.
As Védrine sees it,
EU governments should solemnly call for “a pause” in further
integration. He doesn’t think that a joint European initiative by
France and Germany if U.K. voters choose to leave the bloc on June 23
would be useful. “France,” he said, “will not be strong until
its economy is repaired, through fiscal discipline and structural
reforms on the model of what Gerhard Schröder did in Germany.”
That is bizarre to
hear from the former member of a government — Jospin’s — that
pointedly and explicitly refused in the late 1990s to join the “Third
Way” manifesto pushed by Schröder and U.K. prime minister Tony
Blair. But it is no more bizarre than hearing François Hollande
similarly laud today the same Schröder reforms on which he poured so
much scorn as head of the Socialist Party back then.
True, Védrine
wasn’t in charge of domestic politics at the time. But isn’t
there a contradiction, I ask him, about the “pause” he’s
calling for and his wish for further eurozone integration? “I agree
there is one,” he said. “But we need to complete what was only
partly done when we started.”
Védrine thinks that
the U.K. leaving the union would be a major blow to Europe — and
probably prefers to keep in a country that has always been pragmatic
about the EU, and steered away from the intellectual approach more
common in France or Germany. I ask him as I leave his office: What
would he say to a Brexit partisan?
“That he or she is
stupid,” Védrine said. “The U.K. has all that’s good in
Europe, and isn’t involved in the bad stuff — Schengen and the
euro. Why leave?”
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário