[I like his critique better than his solution. Labor market reform as a magic bullet, feh. But he's right about weak political leadership leading to weak economies and weak foreign policy influence and I think he's pretty good at sketching the keynote events.]
Financial Times, Nov 15, 2002 Europe needs leadership: Three men make a mess of a marriage of convenience By Philip Stephens
The British are getting edgy. France and Germany will soon celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Elysée treaty. In January 1963 Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer put the seal on postwar reconciliation. They built the engine that, after one or two false starts, has driven European integration. So Jacques Chirac, the present occupant of France's presidential palace, wants a grand flourish to show the world (more likely the upstart British) that the Franco-German motor is still running.
As it happens, January is also something of a European moment on the English side of the channel. It will be 30 years since Edward Heath's government took Britain's place at the table of the then European Economic Community. I am told that Tony Blair will not be breaking out the champagne. The official word has gone out that any fanfare will be low-key. Maybe the Foreign Office will produce a fact sheet. There will be no great declaration from the prime minister about Britain's European destiny, nor a historic pledge to join the euro.
Perhaps someone has reminded Mr Blair of an awkwardness of history. The Franco-German treaty was signed just days after General de Gaulle had brusquely snubbed Britain's first application to join the European enterprise. As the British were shown out through the tradesmen's entrance of the Elysée, the Germans were embraced at the front door. The British might be invited back one day, de Gaulle is said to have remarked before sitting down with Adenauer, but: "I shall doubtless no longer be here."
On the other hand, there is more recent cause for chagrin on Mr Blair's part. Only last month at the Brussels summit he was ambushed by one of those infuriating Franco-German deals on the financing of the common agricultural policy when the union enlarges to the east. The imperious Mr Chirac responded to Mr Blair's attempts to unpick the accord by promptly cancelling a planned bilateral summit. The British, it seems, have still to learn their place in Europe.
Such spectacles are great fun for us observers. They remind us that for all the pretence of dignified, dispassionate debate, vanity and human frailty still play a pivotal role in our public affairs. Mr Chirac, after all, was seeking revenge for his own public humiliation only weeks previously. Mr Blair had made the right call before September's German election. For all his intense irritation with Gerhard Schröder's anti-war anti- Americanism, Mr Blair backed the German chancellor. The French president threw his support behind the losing Edmund Stoiber. So when Mr Schröder won, he travelled first to see Mr Blair in Downing Street. One can hardly think of a graver affront to a French president.
Behind the oneupmanship and tantrums, though, lies a more serious story. The uncomfortable truth is that the European Union is not working. Its economy is feeble and its voice on the international stage is fractured and weak. A union of 15 states will soon be one of 25. But until the three most powerful shuffle off the baggage of history, enlargement will be a recipe for stasis.
Mr Chirac is right when he says that "if there is no Franco-German accord, Europe grinds to a halt". What he fails to add is that the shambles that goes by the name of the eurozone's fiscal stability pact is telling testimony to his observation. A single currency area demands an economic bargain between governments and the central bank. Fiscal rectitude and, just as important, structural reform on the one side should be traded for lower interest rates on the other.
None of this is rocket science. But Mr Schröder finds it impossible to admit that the German economic model may need updating. Mr Chirac does not see why anything so trivial as a single currency should interfere with his tax-cutting plans. The result? The euro group lacks political leadership and the central bank goes its own way. Germany takes the absurd decision to raise taxes in a downturn, while France declares that it intends to dine à la carte from the provisions of the stability pact. Europe's economic management falls by default to Wim Duisenberg, a lame duck European Central Bank president so wedded to yesterday's orthodoxy that he would probably refuse to cut interest rates even if prices were falling.
Meanwhile, Mr Chirac deludes himself that France can re-create the bipolar Europe of the 1960s. Forty years on the Paris-Berlin axis may still be a necessary condition of European integration but it is no longer sufficient. The nature of the relationship has changed. The marriage lost its magic - and France its sole claim to the political leadership of Europe - when François Mitterrand (in collusion, it must be said, with Margaret Thatcher) sought to derail German unification.
Just as a sane European economic policy depends on Franco-German understanding, so anything resembling a common foreign policy depends on the Franco-British side of the triangle. For as long as Europe's two nuclear powers disagree, Europe's pretensions on the international stage will be precisely that - pretensions.
The problems here run deeper than policy towards Iraq. When Messrs Blair and Chirac signed the 1998 St Malo agreement to create a European defence identity, they consciously ignored the contradictions between British Atlanticism and French - how shall we put it? - coolness towards Washington. The differences would fade over time. They have not. The present Franco-British dispute over whether peacekeeping troops in Macedonia should be badged as a European rather than as a Nato force represents a deep divide.
Funnily enough, both countries are concerned that America's hard-line stance against Iraq has rekindled German pacifism. They recognise that Germany has an essential place in any European foreign policy. But Mr Blair has failed to appreciate that serving as a member of George W. Bush's war cabinet - albeit on the right side of the argument - hardly enhances his credibility in Europe. France can fairly claim to have much more closely represented the European view during the recent deliberations on Iraq in the United Nations security council.
There are principles at stake here. They cannot be wished away. A big part of the problem is that Mr Schröder is as hesitantly unpredictable as Mr Chirac is mercurial as Mr Blair is ambiguous in his loyalties. There is no magic formula that will see them marching in step. What is required urgently is some self-awareness - and an appreciation of the gulf between point-scoring and leadership.