EUROPEAN PARLIAMENTARY elections in June provide an opportunity “to show how much Europe must change”, according to the French secretary of state for European affairs, Bruno Le Maire.
At the presentation yesterday of the Robert Schuman Foundation’s annual report on the state of the union, Mr Le Maire said Europe “will remain a source of hope only if it changes profoundly”. But aside from urging politicians to show “how alive Europe is, how interesting, how convincing”, there were few specifics on what Mr Le Maire meant by “change”.
Rather, he described Europe as a sort of giant security blanket. “I am convinced that there is no other solution to the economic and financial crisis. Europe provides protection and a way out,” he said.
The French official contrasted “two visions of Europe” in evidence at the recent G20 summit in London. One is “a Europe that would be reduced to a simple free trade zone, which would never cease enlarging, with fewer rules, less political integration, fewer institutions, more territory and more population”.
This was not the model advocated by France and Germany. Theirs is “a political model, built around European institutions which I hope will be strengthened by the Treaty of Lisbon.”
Above all, he said, Europe needed “a clear, guiding political line, agreed by all member states”.
Mr Le Maire referred several times to the “essential” nature of the Lisbon Treaty. Paris was “in constant contact with Czech authorities” in the hope they would assume their “historic responsibility” to see the treaty through ratification by the Czech senate.
“The second, very important rendezvous is with the Irish people,” Mr Le Maire continued. “The holding of a referendum in Ireland in the autumn is the second step. I am hopeful that it will be crossed successfully.
“Without intervening in the Irish political debate, we are ready to make every possible effort to facilitate things and enable Ireland to ratify the treaty, which is essential for the entire EU.”
Answering his own rhetorical question of “what does Europe propose?”, Mr Le Maire said the union needed common economic and industrial policies and to renovate the Lisbon strategy on research and innovation.
The French secretary of state wants Europe to consider its defence strategy over a longer, five- to-10-year period. “Even if there is resistance, which I can understand, at least let us leave open the prospect of a European headquarters to direct shared missions. It is only logical. Leave the possibility open, because now that France is back in the integrated military command of Nato, there can be no qualms over her ambitions for European defence.”
Mr Le Maire, described by a German government member as “understanding the German soul”, was appointed in December with a mission to improve Paris’s relations with Berlin.
“It’s a secret for no one that I consider Germany as the essential nation for France,” he said. He described President Nicolas Sarkozy’s relations with German chancellor Angela Merkel as “dense, strong, founded on total confidence between the two partners”. This “augurs well” for the whole EU. Franco-German friendship was “not a closed relationship, but open to all 27 EU members.”
Opinion polls are predicting record abstention in the European elections. Mr Le Maire said it was important to make voters understand how powerful MEPs were, that 80 per cent of legislation in Europe was passed by the European parliament, that the parliament had a say in questions as varied as whether Turkey joined the EU, who became a commissioner and whether Europe developed its Galileo satellite positioning system as an alternative to the American GPS.