France and the European Union

 

The process of integration

 

1945-1995

 

 

 

 

Module: International Organisation

 

Lecturer: Esref Aksu

 

Student Name: Gerard Horgan

 

Student Number: 0209783

 

Research Topic: A critical evaluation of the relationship between a major world power and an inter-governmental organisation.

 

Paper Synopsis: This essay traces the relationship between France and the European Union in terms of the integration process from 1945-1995. It examines the roles of various French governments, presidents and civil servants in that process from Jean Monnet, Charles De Gaulle, Georges Pompidou, to Valery Giscard d’Estaing and Francois Mitterand.

 It looks at French attempts to shape and influence the European integration process and in turn how France, its government and institutions were themselves altered. It examines France’s power and the limits of that power especially in light of EU enlargement and the reunification of Germany. The theoretical discourse around integration is addressed including aspects such as neofunctionalism, federalism, supranatioanlism and intergovernmentalism.

 

 

Word Count: 3983

 

 

Never separate the grandeur of France from the building of Europe

Francois Mitterand[1]

 

Europe, in every sense, would be inconceivable without France while the French would broadly accept that France would now be hard to conceive without Europe.[2] The French have benefited from the European ‘project’ of which they were in many respects the driving force. This essay will examine the relationship between France and the European Union from the post-war era to the mid 1990s. It discusses the influence of Jean Monnet, Charles de Gaulle, Georges Pompidou, Valery Giscard d’Estaing, and Francois Mitterand. It examines their ideologies, aims and differing responses to the challenge of European integration.

This essay will highlight the leading role France has played in shaping and building the European Union. It will also indicate how France itself was in turn shaped and changed by its membership. The essay examines France’s profound influence on European policy and processes as well as the limits of that influence. It shows France’s proactive drive for European integration as well as its frequent bouts of truculence and recalcitrance. Throughout the essay the theoretical discourse of European integration is addressed.

For over five decades, France has played arguably the leading role is shaping modern Europe as we know today. Through prescient bureaucrats like Jean Monnet and under various presidents, including Charles de Gaulle, France has championed the cause and been the driving force behind Europeans integration. How could a nation so proud of its history and aware of its uniqueness be willing to become politically so pro-European and ready to sacrifice aspects of its sovereignty? This question is an interesting and important one. In order for it to be answered fully it is necessary to examine the immediate post-war era in Europe and the change in the European mindset that the war induced.

Almost all post-war French political leaders envisaged some form of European integration as an ideal and instrument. However, there was considerable division over the process of integration. There were those who “wished too develop on the basis of very close interstate cooperation and those who wanted to take the plunge of moving towards a political entity of a federal nature”.[3] Thoughts that had fostered among the French Resistance during the war were directly related to this federal style Europe. The Hague Conference (1948) was a direct attempt by the federalists to “introduce a new system of governance for post-war Europe that would bind states together in a federation”.[4]

This approach failed to deliver as it was viewed as being too radical and too quick for many however; the conference did lead to the development of the Council of Europe, an intergovernmental body to be based at Strasbourg. It also led to a shift in strategy with the federalists adopting a more gradualist approach embodied in the persona of the French Civil servant, Jean Monnet. Monnet looked beyond the nation-state and to the creation supranational institutions as the basis for building a genuine economic community.

Monnet believed that by building such a community other domains such as the political sphere would follow suit, leading to integration in all areas of Western Europe.[5] The functionalist theorist, David Mitrany, describes Monnet’s strategy as ‘federal-functionalism’.[6] Indeed, the assumptions of the neofunctionalists, such as Ernst Haas, seemed to be well borne out by events throughout the fifties such as the Schumann Plan for the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC).  The ECSC was run by the High Authority, with Monnet as chairman, and was the prototype for the European Commission, which became central to the neofuntionalist theory of European integration.[7] Furthermore, their treatise on the ‘spillover affect’ seemed to ring true in light of the establishment of the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Agency (Euratom) set up under the Treaties of Rome (1957).

 The theoretical attempts to conceptualise the process of European integration did not disguise the aspects of realpolitik that permeated throughout French actions. After three bitter and destructive wars with Germany, French leaders realised that the peaceful future of Europe involved closer Franco-German relations. A Franco-German axis was thus the foundation on which a more integrated Europe would revolve. The burgeoning relationship was characterised as the French engineer managing the German locomotive; French political power would guide German industrial and economic strength to the benefit of the larger European community.

Behind these instincts also lay the belief that such a ‘marriage of convenience’ would speed French economic recovery and provide the necessary stability required in the nascent period of the Cold War. It would also tie Germany firmly to France preventing it from ever starting another war of expansion. The growing interconnectedness of both these economies was a prime feature of European integration over the following fifty years.

 There was also another aspect to French thinking. After the war France began a slow and painful retreat from Empire. As a counter to France’s waning geopolitical power, the EEC was envisaged as a means of reconstituting France’s place among the world’s major powers. Certainly from de Gaulle’s return to power in 1959 and most especially under Mitterand, to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, France attempted to dominate European policymaking with a view to representing France’s interests on the continent and the world at large. As a result, it became very difficult to differentiate between French interests and European ones, as they were virtually synonymous.

The role of the French state and in particular of de Gaulle in shaping the European project seemed to confound neofuntionalist theory that the state played a reduced, almost bystander, role in the integration process. Events of the 1960s turned this on its head as “national governments had power and were clearly prepared to use it to determine integration”.[8]

De Gaulle was motivated by a long-standing fear of the growth of supranationalism; it was anathema to his own personal philosophy on the nature of the nation state and the role of political leaders. The growth of supranational institutions such as the European Commission would necessitate a shift in the decision making process away from national parliaments to a supranational ones. For him, nations were the fundamental reality of history and the essential task of political leaders were to defend the national patrimony from being subsumed into such supranational institutions.

De Gaulle tapped into an undercurrent of French nationalism and portrayed himself as the defender of the state from all subversive influences; this included the United States, Great Britain and the bureaucrats in Brussels. De Gaulle refused to allow his beloved nation stripped of its independence or sovereignty nor would he allow France to disappear into a supranational Europe.

Before coming to power, de Gaulle had told his Prime Minister, Michael Debre, that he wanted to “tear up the Treaty of Rome as an offence against French national sovereignty”.[9] However, once in office his fears gave way to a realisation of the economic and political benefits that a carefully manipulated EEC could provide. His tenure in office was characterised by an attempt to wrench France away from the federalist notion of a United States of Europe and move towards a ‘L’Europe des Patries’, a confederatiom where states would work together but national governments would have the final say.

What de Gaulle really envisaged was a Europe built with a Franco-German foundation and in the image of his nation. British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, after a visit by de Gaulle in 1961 remarked, “He talks of Europe but he means France”.[10]  De Gaulle was unable to convince his partners of the “excellence of his master plan in which nation states would be confederated together, situated in Paris and manipulated by him”.[11] Monnet, writing of de Gaulle’s proposal, stated that it “made no provision for the pooling of sovereignty, for independent institutions…it was vague and hazy…everything about it was conditional, because nothing could be done until France was herself again”.[12]

De Gaulle accepted the economic arrangement of the Common Market that was due on January 1 1959 while politically he realised that France could play a part in Europe and on the world stage thus compensating for the disappearing French Empire. His first steps included a Treaty of Friendship with the German Chancellor Konrad Adeneaur in 1963, who, like de Gaulle, “disapproved the excessive caprices of the European institutions such as the Commission and their attempts to try and replace responsible government”.[13]

De Gaulle’s policy was to lock West Germany in while attempting to keep France’s old adversary, Britain, out.[14] In doing so both de Gaulle and his anti-supranationalist colleagues were ruthless at times, for instance in 1965, France’s ambassador in Brussels was recalled in protest over attempts to introduce majority voting in the Council of Ministers. De Gaulle was determined to defend the French veto and so forced the ‘Luxemburg Compromise’ which reaffirmed the right of veto for each member state in questions which affected its vital interests while the states themselves determined when such interests were at stake. De Gaulle demonstrated that he would never “accept a Europe that called into question France as a centralised, sovereign state”.[15]

The institutional arrangements of the EEC remained a source of irritation to de Gaulle. He opposed any enlargement of the powers of the European parliament while in order to save the Community he threatened to “blow to pieces, his partners agreed to strip the commissions of their prerogatives”.[16] In foreign policy, de Gaulle was unequivocal. France’s worldwide responsibilities precluded this domain from being run from Brussels. He withdrew France from NATO and set about developing France’s nuclear programme ‘Force de Frappe’, while he thwarted attempts to create a European army seeing it as too great a loss of French sovereignty.

De Gaulle’s defence of this key area of foreign policy seems to affirm intergovernmentalists assumptions about the role of the state in the process of European integration.  They argue that it is the state that controls the nature and pace of integration and that the state is guided primarily by national interest. Moreover, they maintained that “integration would not spread to areas of ‘high politics’ such as national security and defence”.[17] This would certainly seem to ring truth if one was to take France as a case study.

The intergovernmentalist, Stanley Hoffman, acknowledges the role of interest groups but considers “national governments to be the ultimate arbiters of key decisions and that where the power of supranational institutions increased they did so where governments believed it to be in their national interest”.[18] De Gaulle’s integrationalist policies certainly expressed intergovernmental characteristics as the process of integration was allowed go only as far as governments were prepared to allow.

It is something of an irony that while de Gaulle “expurgated supranationalism in principle he allowed it to develop in practice”.[19] He backed greater economic cooperation while simultaneously trying to avoid any meaningful political integration. He choose to influence and shape the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to suit French interests yet he refused to allow majority voting in the Council of Ministers, he blocked enlargement by vetoing Britain’s applications for membership and kept French foreign policy decision making firmly within the remit of the Elysee Palace.

France’s a la carte relationship with the EEC was not to last long. De Gaulle’s replacement by Georges Pompidou and later with Valery Giscard D’Estaing marked a new phase in France-EEC relations. This period was significant for the increased tempo towards integration, especially in economic terms, and by a more prudent and flexible approach to France’s European partners.[20]  France’s relations with Europe throughout the 1970s can be characterised as an attempt to transcend Gaullism and its legacy of ambivalence.[21] Greater cooperation and the healing of old rifts, beginning with the admission of Britain to the EEC in 1973, replaced the dogmatism and belligerence, so characteristic of de Gaulle’s time in power.[22]

In particular, 1975 witnessed a deepening of French commitment to the European integration project. Pompidou along will his support of enlargement, endorsed the concept of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) committing France to its successful completion by 1980. He pushed for a twin track approach to intergovernmental cooperation in new policy areas.[23]  Valery Giscard d’Estaing, who made no secret of his firm belief in the process of European integration, replaced Pompidou in 1974. He immediately renewed French commitment to the EMU and set up the European Council, which regularly brought together the heads of government and the heads of state of the European Community.[24] Giscard d’Estaing backed the strengthening of the European Parliament, and created the European Monetary System (1979) in order to alleviate fluctuations and volatility among exchange rates, which became the basis of French commitment into the 1990s.

Giscard d’Estaing together with German Chancellor Schmidt began shaping and strengthening the institutions of the European Community (EC) by securing agreement on the EMS and introducing direct elections to the European Parliament. Giscard d’Estaing was so committed that Jacques Chirac resigned as prime minister stating that Giscard d’Estaing’s plans sought to “dissolve the French state and identity in some supranational Europe”, echoing Gaullist sentiments to the letter.[25]

Francois Mitterand, one of the great French and European statesmen, was elected in 1981. Mitterand had a strong European pedigree; he had been involved in European integration from the outset. In 1954, he had abstained on the crucial vote on the creation of the European Defence Community; he did not want a Europe of the Generals.[26] Mittterand condemned de Gaulle’s policy of the ‘empty chair’ in 1965 and opposed the veto of Britain from EEC membership. Mitterand espousal of  “the cause of greater European integration was an efficient means of confirming his status as de Gaulle’s chief political opponent”.[27]

 Despite the differences, Mitterand’s vision of Europe was not too dissimilar from de Gaulle. Like the General, he envisaged a Europe that could stand up to the economic and political superpowers with France performing its role as the self-perceived leading nation of Europe. Europe was viewed as a “surrogate nation state, the vehicle through which French genius could manifest itself. Both men’s views of Europe were shared by a common patrimony.[28] Mitterand’s vision of Europe was coupled with an underlining pragmatism, which, like his predecessors, recognised the importance of Europe for the pursuance of French objectives. Mitterand was determined to increase the EC’s capability for “intervention where it suited French interests while maintaining effective control in the hands of the intergovernmental ministers”.[29]

Consequently, in the 1980s and 1990s Mitterand was to “the forefront of European statesman willing the EC member states to closer political and economic integration”.[30] Mitterand, from 1981-1983, remained favourable to an intergovernmental model of EC decision-making, as had Presidents Giscard d’Estaing, Pompidou and de Gaulle. It was the responsibility of national leaders to “preside and decide and yet in the interests of European integration and French policy objectives Mitterand proved more than willing to initiate reforms of EC institutional structures”.[31]

In 1982, he reaffirmed the Paris Bonn axis and sought to relaunch the ‘European dynamic’. In 1984, France assumed the rotating presidency of the Council of Ministers of the European Community and“committed itself wholeheartedly and unambiguously to the economic project of European integration”.[32] As France’s commitment deepened its preferences and interests became increasingly “intertwined with and often indistinguishable from its European partner while its sense of national interest came to be identified in terms synonymous with its growing European identity”.[33]

Mitterand set out a broad agenda for the Community such as controlling agricultural spending, a single internal market, enlargement and even a European Space Station. He defended the project of European integration and sought to increase the powers of the European parliament and Commission and to reduce the national veto. [34] Mitterand’s plan warned Britain that her “obstinacy would not be allowed to delay the progress of the Community. It signalled that France intended to locate herself in the inner core and on the fast track of European integration”.[35]

In 1984, at Fountainbleau, the national leaders pledged to the creation of a genuine economic union and to the creation of a single internal market. The Single European Act (1986) that emerged marked a radical departure to the policies of previous French governments because it appeared to “contravene traditional beliefs about the role of the state and the appropriate allocation of power between the member states and European institutions”.[36]

More importantly it led to the growth of supranational institutions that had been an anathema to the Fifth Republic with the European Parliament and Commission being given far reaching powers that pertained to all areas of national economic life. France’s advocacy of EMU indicated support for an “institutional innovation that would constitute the most far-reaching extension of supranational authority in the Community’s history”. [37]  The SEA reflected some French proposals while going well beyond others. For a state that “more than any other founding members had sought to maintain national sovereignty against the incursions of supranational forces, that was a significant extension”.[38]

Along side economic reform, there were growing calls for some kind of ‘genuine political union’, this call was backed by the old Franco-German alliance. In the 1988 French Presidential election Mitterand laid out his plans for the future of Europe. He called for “greater political union, a common defence policy, and protection of the single market”.[39] However, Mitterand, along with most of the world, failed to predict the fall of the Berlin wall and the swift reunification of Germany, all of which were to have profound effects on Europe.

 Mitterand’s initial attitude to German reunification was determined by “the Gaullist balance of power and the need to preserve France’s rank as the pre-eminent political power in Europe”.[40]  This was now threatened. Mitterand attempted to block and then slow down reunification but once he realised its inevitability he embraced it.[41] It is not surprising that soon after Germany’s reunification that there were calls for even greater political union in Europe.

 The drive towards political integration took the form of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) or Maastricht Treaty in 1992. The TEU represented the most ambitious step yet towards economic and political integration and was meant to lock the new Germany firmly into the European project. By accepting and actively pushing for this, Mitterand earned his place in the pantheon of European statesman as he went further than anyone else in the cause of European integration.

However, Mitterand’s decision to take the unnecessary step to put the treaty to a referendum in France marked a turning point in French relations with the European Union as it was soon to be called. The victory of the referendum was a phyrric one for Mitterand. The huge vote against the treaty seemed to reflect a deep malaise among the French population with the European project. People weary of waning French influence, a united Germany, open frontiers and economic recession came together in an unlikely coalition, sending shock waves through Paris and Europe. It seemed as though French efforts had come full circle from eager proponents to disillusioned sceptics.

For five decades of European construction, “successive French governments played a key role in fashioning EU institutions, policy processes and policies”.[42] However, French influence within Europe was weakened by events after 1989 particularly in light of a reunified German state that looked set to influence if not dominate the new Europe.  The future process of European integration “would not be altogether to French tastes or shaped according to French influence”.[43] According to Alain Guyomarch, the situation had changed considerably:

French politicians were being pushed to concede more to their partners than they desired, while at other times the behaviour of just one other member state government could frustrate French plans. By the mid 1990s, France was no longer the main force in determining the political agenda of the EU.[44]

 

De Gaulle had been a tough European partner and at times threatened to destroy the Community itself if he did not get his way. However, as the scope and complexity of EU politics has grown, now French leaders have had to deal with a policy agenda that they increasingly do not control. [45]

The institutional development of the EU has posed particular problems for those French governments reluctant to agree to power being transferred to supranational institutions such as the ECSC and the European Court of Justice (ECJ).[46] The TEU in particular effected core functions and raised constitutional issues. As a consequence, the French nation state has had to adapt and change. Membership of the European Union has meant the building of new institutions, changes to state machinery and the relinquishing of sovereignty to supranational institutions for the greater good of the European integration process. 

The recent enlargement of the EU reinforces the decline in France’s monopoly to represent the whole of France in the EU policy process. France’s voice although still and important one, is still only one, among a whole host of countries each seeking to influence EU policy. In his inaugural, the current French President, Jacques Chirac, spoke of his hope that the French would become:

 

More patriotic and at the same time more European for only when that happens will Europe represent a venue for French leadership in pursuit of the national interest rather than a source of commitments that are costly in political and economic terms.[47]

 

This plea seems to indicate the necessity for the French populace to support the European project in the way in which their governments have done since after the Second World War. France’s relationship with the European Union in the 21^st Century will depend on its ability to exercise the type of control and influence that it so skilfully demonstrated over the latter half of the last century.

 

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