Posted on 06/10/2005 11:54:27 AM PDT by nypokerface
PARIS (AFP) - A crisis in the European Union sparked by French and Dutch voters' rejections of the EU's constitution worsened when France and Germany ganged up on Britain ahead of an important summit next week meant to reorganise the bloc's budget for 2007-2013.
French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, meeting together in Paris, told a joint news conference they wanted Britain to give up a hard-won five-billion-euro (six-billion-dollar) annual rebate it gets from the EU budget -- something British Prime Minister Tony Blair has bluntly and repeatedly ruled out.
"Above all our British friends must recognise how things have changed and the need for greater equity in the financial charges that each country bears," Chirac said.
The two leaders, representing the Franco-German axis that has long driven the European project, also urged the process of ratifying the moribund constitution to continue, despite the two referendum defeats that theoretically kill it off and Blair's decision to suspend a plebiscite on the charter next year.
"We are both in agreement in reaffirming how much the European Union... needs above all to unite and to reflect," Chirac said.
Schroeder, at his side, said it was "premature" to consider the EU constitution a dead letter.
France and Germany's forceful and shared stance, and Britain's refusal to yield set the scene for a dramatic summit of EU heads of state and government in Brussels next Thursday and Friday.
The atmosphere was expected to be especially tense between Chirac and Blair, whose usually polite relationship has degenerated into acrimony at times in the past over EU matters.
Chirac said the EU rebate Britain won in 1984 after tough negotiations by then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher was "now old".
He said each EU state "must make an effort" so that the union's financial problems do not exacerbate the political ones revealed by the resistance to the EU constitution.
But British Prime Minister Tony Blair has refused to give way, calling instead for a "fundamental review" of EU spending -- implied to mean a revision of costly EU agricultural subsidies from which French farmers greatly benefit.
The French president, whose authority at home has been enormously weakened by his country's rejection of the EU charter, countered by saying he would not overturn a deal he and Schroeder struck in 2002 to keep the agricultural subsidy system intact until 2013.
"Everyone must pay his share... but I am not prepared to compromise" on the EU Common Agriculture Policy, he said.
Schroeder did hold out the promise that France and Germany were ready to make a unspecified, "constructive compromise" at the summit.
It was the leaders' second get-together in the wake of French and Dutch rejection of the EU charter in the past two weeks.
A former European commissioner, British parliamentarian Neil Kinnock, accused Chirac of using the row over the British budget rebate as a diversion from his own problems over the EU constitution.
"Chirac playing these diversionary games simply adds to the discredit," said Kinnock, who is a member of Blair's Labour Party.
Commentators noted that Chirac and Schroeder will be going into the summit severely weakened.
Chirac faces a lame-duck presidency to the end of his mandate in 2007 because of the referendum debacle, while various electoral defeats in Germany have left Schroeder with little prospect of holding on to power in polls next year.
On the other hand, Blair last month won a third mandate and is governing one of the rare vibrant economies among the major EU members.
A veto from him would scuttle the summit and delay EU budget decision to early next year.
"Tony Blair may not have the intention of ruining the European summit. But he has the power to do so. That's his strength," the French newspaper Le Figaro said.
It is ironic that you have the guts to defend why you have SURRENDERED! It is typical French arrogance and neglect of the basic facts and reality.
"It is ironic that you have the guts to defend why you have SURRENDERED! It is typical French arrogance and neglect of the basic facts and reality."
Well, the total inadaptation of the 1939 French General Headquarters and the 1.4 million dead French soldiers of WW1 were quite real and very factual...as you would know by reading any History book.
Perhaps you would have prefereed some "French racial inferiority" factor ?
(even though the clapping woman next to the weeping guy makes little sense).
May be she was delighted to see the German troops and started her own prostitution business. After the liberation of France, many French women were dragged into the streets of Paris with their head shaved for being the prostitute of the German Wheirmacht.
You are the one rewriting history and finding all the dumb excuses for why France SURRENDERED (capital letters again) in WW II. I spoke the truth and you cannot handle it, and the vast majority of French cannot handle the truth either.
Those "dumb" excuses are, as I keep saying to deaf ears, all over any History book you could open if you dared... But please feel free to think France surrendered for 'racial inferiority' reasons if that makes you feel more manly. Just keep in mind, that's what the Nazis thought.
Yes, every country has its terrible defeats and disasters.
In World War II, everyone was surprised by the power of air armies. The French Army was badly commanded and when the Germans penetrated the lines and raced towards Paris, the stunned and slower French units, placed out of command by the interdiction of their lines of communication with the center, were hors combat.
Then the Parliament surrendered to the Germans, although many, many French continued the fight. There were 400,000 Free French soldiers in the 1944 and 1945 campaigns under General Eisenhower's command. Eisenhower considered the participation of the French partisans in the D-Day invasion, blowing bridges and cutting communications lines to prevent German reinforcement, to have been worth six divisions.
And, of course, 50,000 allied pilots (including the Frenchmen who flew in the RAF once France fell, and the Americans who flew in the RAF during the long, long period in which America remained out of the war as the Nazis devoured Europe and devastated London. The English did not love America in 1940 and 1941, as the wolf was at the door, and the Americans remained aloof and did not come. Hitler was defeated in the skies of Western Europe by the Royal Air Force and the valiance of the English. The Americans did not enter the war at all until the British (with help from valorous Americans who volunteered to fight the Nazi evil two years before their country finally was attacked by the Axis and dragged against its will into the war, and also with the help of Poles, and French, and Dutch and Danes and Norwegians and all of the other suffering peoples of the West and East who escaped to British territory to continue the war against the Devil) had whipped the Germans themselves. America's entry ensured that Europe would not be Soviet, thank God, but Hitler was truly defeated by English commanders alone, English commanders and British pilots, with French and Polish and Dutch and Canadian and Danish and Norwegian and South African, and a handful of American volunteer pilot, in the air over London and Coventry, Liverpool and East Anglia.
Everyone owes a debt of gratitude to the Americans.
But everyone owes a much greater debt of gratitude to the English, first and foremost, for they were the ones who stopped Hitler. Followed by the Russians.
America's share in Europe's salvation is appreciated, but it would be more glorious had the Americans not been utterly indifferent to the conquest of the West and the flattening of England during the long 2 years of the Nazi advance.
That is the first thought.
The second is that America suffered as bad a shock as France did when air armies broke upon it. The entire US Army of the Philippines surrendered to the Japanese. Most of its casualties were in death marches and death camps, and not in fighting. The American fleet was surprised and destroyed at Pearl Harbor. The carrier fleet was very nearly destroyed at the Coral Sea. America was caught by surprised and had armies surrender and navies sent flaming to the bottom. The breadth of the Pacific Ocean protected America long enough for the Americans to catch their breath, muster their forces and counter-attack.
Paris is less than 200 kilometers from Germany.
That is the difference.
All nations suffer defeats and reverses.
America did too, in World War II.
When the Americans were finally attacked and could not longer shirk the responsibility of fighting evil any longer, they provided the crucial balance of forces that guaranteed that Europe would be free and democratic instead of Soviet and communist. And this is well. It would have been better had America, like her Canadian neighbor, had stood up to Hitler from the time he invaded democratic Poland, instead of waiting until the evil caused an American army to surrender and an American fleet to be destroyed.
But that is all in the past now.
Perhaps we should talk about today.
"The Normans are the descendants of Vikings".
They are the descendants of Viking men and Gallo-Roman and Frankish women. Since no new Vikings came after settlement, the Viking element was much attenuated several generations later at the Norman conquest.
Vikings did not bring shipfuls of women on their wars.
The first generation were mostly 50% French, 50% Viking, with the Viking element diminishing rapidly. The Normans were French like the Manchus are Chinese.
The United States won WW II Frenchie.
And France SURRENDERED. Stop rewrting history, it is very stupid to rewrite such obvious facts and history.
You just do not admit you are bunch of cowards who surrendered to the Germans in WW II. The United States lost some battle in WW II but they won the war. You French SURRENDERED and lost the war until the US and Britain liberated you from Nazi Germany.
Simply you were dumb and cowards, and that is why you surrendered and lost the war.
YOU SURRENDERED.
You had millions of troops and thousands of tanks and airplanes to fight the Germans and you just did not want to fight. Why? because you were cowards.
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