Chirac looks to the skies for some inspiration

FRANCE: Jacques Chirac has been promoting an integrated defence policy, writes Lara Marlowe, in Le Luc en Provence

The Tiger helicopter zoomed menacingly towards the French president, swerved away, bucked like a horse, climbed vertically, then dived, nose down.

The perilous performance at the Franco-German helicopter training school on an army base in southern France yesterday might have been an allegory for Mr Jacques Chirac's attempts to hold his fractious government together while persuading the French to ratify the European constitutional treaty in a referendum on May 29th.

Mr Chirac used the visit to the helicopter school 45 kilometres from Toulon to vaunt the progress of the treaty in fostering a common European defence policy. "Defence is one of the essential aspects of European integration," the French leader said, speaking in an aircraft hangar in front of huge French and German flags. "The constitution will provide a solid base for Defence Europe, giving it a fresh impetus."

Mr Chirac emphasised the constitution's most important defence innovation: "The treaty asserts for the first time the principle of solidarity and mutual assistance between the member-states of the European Union," he noted. "In the event of armed aggression, the states of the Union owe each other assistance."

The French president said these commitments were "perfectly compatible with those made within the Atlantic Alliance ... which remains the foundation of our collective defence." The EU's representative for foreign policy and security, Javier Solana, who is likely to become the Union's foreign and defence minister if the treaty comes into force, was more frank about tensions between European defence enthusiasts like Mr Chirac and Atlanticist leaders in Britain, Italy and eastern Europe. "The divergence of views on the degree of autonomy of our defence policy can diminish the efficiency of our action," Mr Solana said in Paris this week. Mr Chirac did not mention Europe's neutral states, but the treaty aspires to be all things to all Europeans, and offers a get-out clause to neutrals as well as Atlanticists.

A German officer called the helicopter school "a laboratory of integration in the framework of European defence". The Tiger support and protection helicopter, built by France, Germany and Spain at a cost of €20 million each, was quite simply, "the best in the world today".

Mr Chirac also heaped praise on the new chopper. It was, he said, "the very example of what an army should do to rank among the world's leading forces... an illustration of what Europeans can achieve together when they combine their efforts". The necessity of pooling European resources to design and build state-of-the-art weaponry is an oft-heard argument for defence integration. Other joint projects praised by Mr Chirac were the Airbus A 400M military transport aircraft, the NH 90 transport helicopter, Franco-Italian frigates and the Franco-British aircraft carrier.

The constitutional treaty will place such projects under the aegis of the European Defence Agency. One of its main objectives will be to co-ordinate weapons development and procurement in the EU. It is not clear whether the agency will also promote arms sales outside the Union.

One of the most important goals of European integration, Mr Chirac reminded his Franco-German military audience, was "ruling out the possibility of war on our continent, first and foremost between France and Germany." The two countries are "the engine behind European defence," he said. A joint proposal submitted by the two powers in November 2002 formed the basis for the defence sections of the constitutional treaty.

If the treaty comes into force as scheduled in November 2006 it will create "permanent structured co-operation" among states who wish to actively pursue a common defence policy. EU members who chose not to participate will have no say in deliberations or decisions. France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg - all founding members of the EU who attended the "chocolate summit" derided by the Bush administration in April 2003 - are expected to constitute the core of the defence group.

Mr Chirac must have envied his German guest yesterday, the state secretary for defence Hans Georg Wagner. The Bundestag will ratify the constitutional treaty on May 12th, without any of the grief experienced by Mr Chirac.

"It was a mistake to call a referendum to ratify the treaty," said a colonel in the French army at the cocktail party following Mr Chirac's speech. "We elect parliamentarians to do that sort of thing." For Mr Chirac, European defence is a requisite underpinning of European political power. The French foreign minister, Michel Barnier, presided over the defence group in the convention that drew up the constitutional treaty. So it would be ironic if France thwarted European defence integration a second time by voting against the treaty on May 29th.

In 1954, the French government opposed the establishment of the European Defence Community, preventing the Union from addressing defence issues for several decades. "Imagine! Defence would have happened before the economy," sighed a French army commandant, recalling that the common market wasn't established until 1957.