It was the year of the French

IT was the year of the French. Nominating news events that set international trends at the beginning of one year and the end of another is a hazardous, selective, even a capricious task. But sometimes events and trends coalesce in such a way as to make it easier for the journalist or commentator.

Events in France last year brought together a number of factors that will continue to set the international agenda in 1996, certainly from the point of view of those who share membership of the European Union with them.

France emerged from the end of the Cold War vulnerable to a changing balance of power in Europe driven by German unification and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Within the framework of the Cold War institutions, France asserted political leadership in the EU, its prowess neatly compensating West Germany's economic strengths. Britain clung fast to its role of trusted lieutenant of the United States, which it is only now having to re-examine in a fundamental way.

The Franco-German relationship continued to drive the EC as it evolved into the EU by way of the Maastricht Treaty. It is intended by the policy elite of each of these states that the creation of a single European currency will copperfasten their relationship. It will, according to Chancellor Kohl, necessitate a political union, a new macropolitics and macroeconomics, which can contain the demons of Germany's historical temptation to go it alone in Europe, while giving the French a shared sovereignty over the preponderant power of its larger neighbour and erstwhile antagonist.

The question posed by last year's events in France is whether its leaders can position themselves to qualify for the currency regime in the face of the huge popular movement of social protest that erupted in the last two months.

This was not just a French movement. It underlined and expressed in a striking way what has been a major theme of European and international politics for several years - deteriorating relations between political elites and mass publics, coinciding with a growing crisis of representation in party systems. These themes permeate this World Review.

It is not at all surprising that they should spill over into the European Union itself. Above all, it is a project driven by the national elites, just as much to reinforce as to supersede their national positions.

As they prepare this year to review the Maastricht Treaty in another Inter-Governmental Conference, there is great concern among its leaders that the EU has lost the support of mass publics, despite a surprising fund of popular goodwill, because it has not been capable of tackling and solving problems that concern them.

Hence the emphasis on employment and drugs as themes of the EU Irish presidency in the second half of the year, which will involve a huge commitment of time and energy for a small state. It is assumed that demonstrable progress on these fronts will help restore legitimacy to the Union as a whole. But the neo-liberal model of structural adjustment and reform of labour markets on which EU employment and economic policy is predicated has come right up against a disbelieving French public.

It is not prepared to accept elite assurances that there is no alternative to the welfare cuts and industrial rationalisations introduced by the Chirac-Juppe government.

INTERPRETATIONS differ, of course, as to whether France typifies the predicaments facing other European states or whether, on the contrary, it is finally having to face up to reforms that have been introduced more gradually elsewhere. There is a long tradition of structural reform introduced by quasi-revolutionary means and it would be a great mistake to underestimate the government's determination to qualify for monetary union.

President Chirac told the cabinet three weeks ago that they were not elected "to preside over the decline of France".

As Kathryn Hone puts it in the World Review, however, there is more to life than economics; the French protesters are expressing a "spiritual hunger", according to one philosopher. They are also impatient with a policy elite whose prescriptions for a single currency seem to amount to mass unemployment, a stagnant economy, increasing taxes and social exclusion for many of their countrymen and women.

Other writers in this review take up these themes, demonstrating that they are international in scope. The sociologist Amitai Etzioni, in an article on communitarianism, argues that "we do not just need economic rehabilitation. . . we need to give our daily acts transcendent meaning and moral significance." He cites Jacques Delors among those who adhere to his philosophy, and also Bill Clinton and Paddy Ashdown.

In a debate on nationalism in Europe it is made clear that these debates about identity and value systems are an important ingredient of contemporary politics. Bosnia posed such questions most clearly and starkly for Europeans.

But the themes of globalisation and market internationalism now affect all parts of the world. They may be seen most clearly in the series of international and regional trade pacts that have emerged in the last few years. Capped by the newly-installed World Trade Organisation agreed at the end of the GATT Uruguay Round we now have the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Asia-Pacific Economic Forum, the New Atlantic Agenda and new arrangement binding European, Mediterranean and eastern European states.

As many critics have pointed out, the developing world has had a raw deal from these agreements. Structural problems of indebtedness and restricted market access for their goods belie the talk of a free world market. But within these controversies an alternative international agenda, based on cohesion and social solidarity, is struggling to get out to compete with the neo-liberal one based only on strict economic performance.

This is one of the most interesting challenges of international relations, which the events in France have brought to our attention.