Thank heavens for our British identity crisis. You know, losing an empire and not finding a way. It sounds a bit hoary now, but it still offers excellent protection. While we cling to it we have a valid reason for not moving into the euro (or, for that matter, clean out of the euro). The particular charm of our identity problem is that we believe it is weightier than anyone else’s. Other Europeans, not having so grand an obstacle to contend with, have it easy. The way is mapped out for them.
Even in his latest European garb Tony Blair seems to accept this. But there is a flaw in the identity logic that British governments variously employ to hold Europe at arm’s length and, now, to burden us with a politically messy referendum on the euro. Those other Europeans – France and Germany at their head – are not having it easy. As Europe firms up, they are having identity convulsions of their own. The difference is that they remain no less decided on the way they aim to take.
In France the new film Asterix has been showing for some weeks now and is doing very good business indeed. The French can’t resist the cunning little comic-book Gaul and his mastery of the survival arts. Asterix’s assaults on the overbearing Ancient Rome (for which you may safely bet the French see today’s Brussels) are no less deft than those delivered by the mismanagement inquiry which has floored the EU Commission.
It may not be obvious that France, being France, needs a new national logo. Nonetheless Lionel Jospin, the prime minister, has ordered one up – a flying-haired Marianne on a tricolour – to show the world what’s what. Take these as small signs among many larger ones of modern France’s tussle with its identity.
The first thought the French had on learning of Oskar Lafontaine’s recent departure as finance minister in Germany was: oh no, there goes that fool chancellor Gerhard Schroder dropping us and joining up with Tony Blair on his “Third Way”. This isn’t primarily because Lafontaine shared French economic policy goals, though he did share some. Rather it is because Lafontaine is a born Francophile, which Schroder is not. The more freedom Schroder has to go his own way, the more the French worry.
In the age of the euro, the rising concerns of both the French and the Germans over who they are and who they want to be are out on display. A scan of France’s build-up to the European elections shows fractures the size of our own. Even without the collapse and mass resignation of the EU Commission, the splits are bewildering. On the right, outright opponents of Europe (some of them with clout, such as Charles Pasqua, once Jacques Chirac’s favourite political uncle) battle with a moody middle ground of self-questioning supporters and with gung-ho conservative liberals who want a federal Europe with a popularly elected president of Europe to head it.
On the left, which holds power, the split is between a pro-European majority and anti-European Communists encouraged by nationalists such as Jean-Pierre Chevenement, who is curbing his deep Euroscepticism in public to stay on working terms with Jospin, his boss. If there is a glimmer of a common denominator in all this it is that French acceptance of a federal Europe has definite limits: federalism is all right as long as it is economic, not political.
Far from reflecting self-confidence over France’s place in the world, ease with the euro reflects relief at having a dependable currency to replace the wobbly old franc. The French have never had the emotional tie with the franc that Britons have with the pound.
Watch French attitudes towards the United States for an up-to-the-minute guide to the identity problem. The French, I suspect, would as soon be original as right. They have certainly been original over the years. Now they believe they are unquestionably right to question America’s predominance of power, which they find unhealthy. Hubert Vedrine, the foreign minister, exhorts his European colleagues to stand up against American unilateralism. Chirac and Jospin are openly critical of America’s taste for projecting its unique strength, and they plan systematic opposition.
Leaving aside bananas and the horrible executions American justice condones, France is clearly on to something here, as Blair might (but no doubt won’t) concede. Yet I can’t help wondering whether France isn’t at least equally interested in grasping a good chance to assert itself so as to stand out anew in Europe. The French are aching to re-establish their blurred identity as leaders in Europe. They believe the European Union is essentially about France. They may be right. Acting prickly with America underlines it.
Germany has, or had, rather different ideas about Europe. But now it has a France-sized identity problem which looks yet more complicated to fix.
Chancellor Schroder’s take on European integration is this: you do it because you want to do it, not because you have to. Under Helmut Kohl and all previous postwar chancellors, the Germans did it because they believed they had to – to ensure peace, to make up with France, and so on.
So Schroder aims to shake the phoneyness out of Germany, and also to lift the shroud of self-consciousness over the Holocaust. A first task is to revamp the famous “social market” which has lost its competitive edge and now gives ordinary Germans a false sense of security. Here is a big psychological challenge which proved beyond Kohl.
In effect this is a quest for a new identity. The timing is propitious. Within months, German democracy will have shifted its headquarters from worthy little Bonn to Berlin, once more a lively metropolis sitting on top of Central Europe. Some 200,000 Russians have somehow installed themselves in Berlin; Turks are still more numerous there. Do not expect a revival of the Prussian spirit. The problem is to mould this new-look Germany with the hard-driving business Germany to the south which buys up Chrysler in America and Rover in Britain, runs the euro and one day – never mind the flaws in the economic model – will most likely pick up Gazprom or something equally huge from Russia’s strapped energy tsars.
The identity quest is off to a shaky start, however. Hidebound nationality laws based on German bloodlines are an obvious burden to shed. The first reform Schroder tried was to change them, potentially turning four million Turks and other foreign immigrants into Germans and hereafter bestowing automatic nationality on foreigners’ children born in Germany. Unfortunately Germans weren’t ready for this, as voters indicated at the first available poll. The new government has felt obliged to hedge.
Change hasn’t advanced a lot further in the matter of German self-consciousness, either. The departure of Kohl does seem the time to grapple with it, and grapple with it some have done. The historian Martin Walser put forth the plausible idea that endless dwelling on the Nazi past has brought Germans to moral exhaustion. Few ordinary Germans would have disagreed. A national debate reopened. The post-Kohl political generation was ready to shed complexes. But Walser’s exhaustion has been no match for the past. German opinion-makers who shared his frustration also worried that they might be accused of forgetting the Holocaust. The complex-shedding has cooled off.
Part of the phoneyness that Schroder seems better placed to counter is Germany’s status as Europe’s soft touch. In the past the Germans kept remarkably quiet (blame the atonement complex) about putting up half the EU budget on their own. Now they are thumping tables with Thatcherite boldness, making sure that everyone is aware of the inequity. Germany insists on cutting its contribution. It won’t pay for French farmers, Greek harbours, the Scottish Highlands and all the rest.
For the time being the French have induced Schroder to accept a French-tailored compromise on farm policy, which is Europe’s biggest financial headache. An EU summit in Berlin this week should enshrine the deal even as heads of government attempt to rebuild a credible Brussels Commission. Whether the Commission’s fall will turn out for the best, as “root and branch” clean-up therapists hope, is not clear. What is clear is the outline of a tougher German policy on Europe. The Berlin government will be placing German interests before Europe’s – as other governments perpetually do theirs.
For some years Germany has had in mind a federal Europe. The euro could not have been accepted by the mark-adoring Germans if they hadn’t had some positive picture of the future in mind. They did. It was the vision of a Europe operating like federal Germany itself, with interdependent states (Lander) working in political harness and, mostly, harmony. Now the picture Schroder holds out is different. It looks more like a Europe of nation states. France’s Chirac and Jospin, not to mention Blair, prefer that version, too.
But does a new Germany still need France’s intimate friendship? The political ground has changed. With Lafontaine gone, taking his “old left” approach with him, Schroder’s Neue Mitte and Blair’s new Labour evidently make a tighter fit than either does with Jospin’s left-wing pragmatism. The German and British leaders see eye to eye on the right balance between enterprise and welfare. Schroder’s Euro-creed is a warning to the French. Germany will work hand-in-glove with France because it wants to, not because it has to. France must keep making it want to.
And I predict France will. This is why. As they sort out who they want to be, both the French and the Germans remain quite sure of their engagement in Europe. No one ever made a fortune out of betting on Franco-German estrangement, though it sometimes appears likely, even probable. They are committed to taking integration further, beyond the euro. Their identity crises, though real enough, are not like Britain’s. They serve a proper purpose. Ours has become a fig leaf for faint-heartedness.
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