Leaders in waiting out to conjure a new vision of Europe
The Times/UK
July 18, 2005
By Charles Bremner and Roger Boyes
Stars of a new Paris – Berlin axis against the old guard meet with a new authority
THE outline of a new European landscape, both welcome and a challenge
to Britain, will be sketched in a Paris townhouse tomorrow when Angela
Merkel, Germany’s probable next Chancellor, meets Nicolas Sarkozy,
France’s would-be next President.
Frau Merkel, the Christian Democrat leader, holds a comfortable
lead on the Social Democrat Gerhard Schröder before the election
in September. M Sarkozy, the chief of President Chirac’s Union for
a Popular Majority and the most dynamic figure in French politics,
is hoping to replace M Chirac in 2007. The meeting is their first
since Frau Merkel won her party leadership.
She is a stolid east German and he is a slick Paris lawyer-politician,
and they are not close personally. But the ambitious 50-year-old
conservatives share so much common ground as pro-Atlantic,
market-minded reformers that their possible rise to office in tandem
conjures visions of a remarkable shift in continental power.
Under a Chancellor Merkel and a President Sarkozy, today’s weak and
defensive Paris-Berlin axis could give way to an easier alliance
with Britain.
Although she avoids the obvious comparison, last week Frau Merkel
praised the “very positive role” that Margaret Thatcher had played
in overhauling the British economy, which has now overtaken Germany’s
in per capita income.
M Sarkozy infuriated M Chirac last week by saying that France, also
trailing Britain, needed a Thatcher and a Blair to kick life into
its economy and scrap “the policies of 50 years ago”.
Both say that their nations need to move away from their old view
of themselves as the EU’s managing partners and repair links with
Washington. The French press refers to “Sarkozy l’Américain”.
Yet a healthy new ParisBerlin alliance, while broadly aligned with
Tony Blair’s view of the world, may not be such a welcome prospect
for the Prime Minister. A Merkel-Sarkozy agenda, potentially more
self-confident than any since the days of President Mitterrand and
Chancellor Kohl in the 1980s and 1990s, would create a different type
of axis, but it would remain opposed to some important British goals.
These include further EU enlargement. Both Frau Merkel and M
Sarkozy want Turkey to be excluded from Europe permanently —
a position popular in both countries but not supported by their
present goverments.
The pair, although more open to globalisation than their defensive
elders, would continue to pursue deeper European integration despite
difficulties over the constitution. Pragmatic and market-friendly,
they nevertheless remain sympathetic to industrial policies in which
the State promotes national “champions”. Frau Merkel is M Chirac’s
guest this week and her aides are reluctant to feed speculation of
a rift. “The thinking in the Merkel camp is plainly that Chirac has
passed his sell-by date,” one diplomat said. “But she would be really
ill-advised to let that seep into the public domain. She will have
to work with or around him on some key European projects from the
day after she wins.”
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