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From: norgesen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Dec 21, 2005 3:44 PM
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Subject: [cia-drugs] Europe's two Queens
Two women in charge of the Franco-German axis that has long directed the European project would represent a striking change.
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Walker's World: Europe's two Queens
By Martin Walker
UPI Editor
Published December 19, 2005
Koenigin Angela may be getting another female rival in Europe's corridors of power. No sooner was Germany's new Chancellor Angela Merkel dubbed the new Queen of Europe after her calmly decisive role in settling the European Union's budget battle over the weekend than a new royal rival emerged.
Royal indeed, for that is the surname of Segolene Royal, just tipped for the top after a new French poll showed her strongly in the lead as the favored Presidential candidate for France's Socialist party. The poll showed her as the top choice of 48 percent of French Socialist Party members, followed by former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin with 39 percent.
Royal, the live-in partner of the party's secretary-general Francois Hollande, is a former minister for family affairs, and her swift rise to political stardom has provoked some waspish remarks from Socialist rivals.
Another former Prime Minister, Laurent Fabius, sniffed that if she became the party's Presidential candidate, "Who would stay home to take care of the children?" Jack Lang, former Culture Minister, noted dryly that the party's selection process "should not be a beauty contest."
Royal currently lags behind the front-runner in the Presidential stakes, current Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. The latest CFE-Sofres poll, published in the daily Le Monde, gives Sarkozy 26 percent and Segolene Royal 13 percent, by far the highest of any Socialist candidate and a remarkable performance for someone of relatively modest high-level government experience.
If and when she becomes the Socialist candidate, the resulting publicity for France's first serious female candidate for head of state since the ill-fated Marie-Antoinette is likely to give her a strong boost in the polls, and French commentators are already salivating over the prospect of what they called the "Sarko-Sego" contest, made all the more interesting by the prospect of her ruling alongside Germany's Queen Angela.
Two women in charge of the Franco-German axis that has long directed the European project would represent a striking change, the more dramatic since Britain, whose pioneering Margaret Thatcher demonstrated just how decisive a woman could be at the helm, has no similar rising female political star.
Whoever succeeds the lame duck Jacques Chirac in the French Presidency, Sarkozy, Royal or the current Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, will face four dramatic challenges, and each of them will only be resolved in the broader context of the European Union and relations with Germany, Europe's biggest economy.
The first challenge will be to tackle the problem of France's vast and restive immigrant minority, close to 10 percent of the population, mainly Muslim, and with unemployment levels two and three times higher than the national average. The dramatic riots that swept France's cities in November pointed to the urgency of reforming both the immigration rules, which are now to be set as the EU level, and fixing the French economy, which is the second great problem.
With double digit unemployment and over 21 percent of the labor force employed by the French state, France remains relatively little touched by the worldwide wave of free trade and free market reforms. Pushing those reforms in France, Germany and elsewhere in the EU has been, at least in theory, a top EU concern since the Lisbon summit five years ago set an ambitious agenda of economic and labor market reform. But there has been little concrete progress, and promoting labor market (and thus labor union) reform will be a major concern and a serious headache for the next leaders of France and Germany alike.
So the next issue they must face is the future of the Franco-German special relationship at the heart of Europe, an axis that has been visibly creaking and groaning as Britain under Tony Blair has taken a more central role in EU affairs, and as important new players like Poland have joined the EU. From the Franco-German alliance sealed by Charles De Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer in 1960, through the era of Helmut Schmidt and Valery Giscard d'Estaing and Francois Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl, leaders of the two countries have closely coordinated their strategies on Europe, and usually charted the EU's strategic course.
It may have looked that way again when Gerhard Schroeder and Jacques Chirac combined to oppose the Iraq war in 2003, but they failed to get their way because the United States and Britain were able to rally a new Europe of the former Soviet block countries in Eastern Europe. France and Germany dominated the Europe of six countries that lasted from 1957-1973, and still dominated the Europe of the nine, from 1973 to 1986, but the Europe of 15 was already too unruly after Sweden, Finland and Austria joined in 1995. And today's Europe of 25 member states is simply too big for France and Germany to maintain their old sway.
Whether France and Germany broaden their group to include Britain, in what some called 'the Directorate' of the 3 big economies, or make a new Big Four with Spain and Poland, or try to pioneer a new hard core group that pushes ahead to full political integration while leaving skeptics and faint hearts like the British behind, remains an open question. But it will dominate Franco-German relations for the rest of this decade.
And in this context, the fourth big question is whether or not the new draft EU constitution, decisively rejected by Dutch and French voters this year, can be revived. An answer is already being prepared by Chancellor Merkel, who is proposing to attach a codicil on the "social dimension of Europe" to the failed constitution, in order to win leftist support for a constitution they had condemned as too Anglo-Saxon in its economic provisions. It would require all EU institutions to weigh social implications of all new EU legislation, and thus reconcile voters who objected to globalization, EU enlargement and liberalization of the service markets.
"It will be the main task for the German EU presidency", Elmer Brok, a leading German conservative in the European Parliament, told the business newspaper Handelsblatt Sunday, referring to Germany's turn to chair the EU Council in January 2007 -- the year France and Holland will hold new elections. "It falls into the hand of Germany to save the constitution", Brok said.
This means that Germany's Merkel looks set to play a decisive role in the future decisions of which French President emerges in the 2007 elections, whether there will be two female royals at Europe's head or not. Whatever the sex of the next French President, the main political priorities will be defined within the new EU context that Germany's Queen Angela looks likely to dominate.
http://www.wpherald.com/print.php?StoryID=20051219-031125-3817r
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