French Ambivalence

pete quentin, 20 October 2008

A report published by the independent Brussels-based think tank the Thomas More Institute for European Studies examines the performance of the French Presidency of the EU Council so far, assessing its contribution to the long term development of EU policy. The Presidency, which started in July this year and will end on 31st December, scored 11.5 out of 20 possible marks for its mid-term performance, writes Judith Gollata.

The institute judged the French presidency by comparing it’s initial propositions and their subsequent outcomes along the twelve major themes outlined in the French Work Programme. According to the survey the French Presidency has done well in the areas of immigration (with the migration pact sealed by EU leaders last Thursday) and addressing the global financial crisis (a mark which Gordon Brown might claim for himself, given the widespread belief that the EU solution to financial turmoil was modelled on Brown’s own rescue package!) In other areas though, the French Presidency has not quite achieved its staed aims and especially in the areas of climate change and energy security, according to the report.
The results were published just in time to be recognised at the EU summit held in Brussels last week and emphasised an interesting point. Shortly after the summit French President Nicolas Sarkozy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso renewed calls for a permanent EU Presidency as opposed to the rotating system which is in place now. They insist that six months is simply not enough time in to afford change within the slow working mechanisms of EU politics. Changing the Presidency of the EU Council to a permanent position is exactly what the EU Lisbon Treaty proposes but, as pointed out recently by Jean-Claude Juncker (Prime Minister of Luxembourg), it is rather unlikely that the Lisbon Treaty will come into force before 2010.
The survey also pointed out that the French performance has been particularly poor in dealing with the EU’s institutional turmoil provoked by the rejection of the Lisbon Treaty. Thus it comes as a bit of a surprise to find Sarkozy pleading for institutional change while he has been neglecting this very same area over the past couple of months. The French Presidency might have been distracted by the Georgia-Russia conflict and the global financial turmoil, but the message clearly is an ambivalent one. Barroso and Sarkozy have recently used every occasion to demonstrate their newly gained unity and Sarkozy has even been considered to become the first permanent EU president by Barroso, but his efforts of the past couple of months present a different picture. Irish leader Brian Cowen pledged on the first day of the summit last week to come up with a roadmap of how to proceed with the ratification process of the Lisbon Treaty before the EU summit in December.
The pressure is on for the French President to finally tackle the EU’s Lisbon Treaty debacle (i.e. by deciding once and for all how the EU will proceed following Ireland’s resounding ‘NO’ to the Treaty at a referendum earlier this year). Tackling the EU’s institutional turmoil in his remaining ten weeks might help the French Presidency score more points than simply plagiarising British solutions to the financial crisis.