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 came pretty close there in the early 1940s...especially if you diffentiate between British and European.
I suppose that proves your point. :)
"...eurozone currency was weakened by news that France's gross domestic product in the first quarter grew 0.2%, below expectations."
http://www.mabico.com/en/news/20050520/foreign_exchange/article22683/
It is just amazing and joyful to see how the leaders of the war in Iraq, President Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard of Australia, have been re-elected and enjoying a lot of power where as the leaders (weasels), Chriac, Shcroeder, who opposed the war are being crushed and defeated by their own people.
ChIraq sounds just like the thugs who control the UN and the Eurosnob thugs who control Nato and the Euro.
Oh, I get it. Socializm! Britain, you have more money. Give it to us!
What's their inflation rate?
I always thought that opening up NAFTA to the Brits and even the Irish would be a good idea. I also liked the idea of offering Statehood to the Polish before they joined the EU.
Please elaborate - I'm very interested in your analysis.
Novus Ordo Terrae
It's over Jack....
El Alors tu a perdue Vicomte13.
You President, and France have lost Vicomte 13. Defeat is an important part of your history, you cannot live without it.
Beware. France always betrays her allies.
Isn't Vile Lapin now the Prime Minister?
Chiraq would be a lot funnier if he weren't so darned dangerous. Hopefully he's been largely declawed, but he's responsible for a lot of our dead. I'd like to see him in his underwear next to Saddam. Not that i have a thing for that.
Didn' they try this in about 1940-41 ? It didn't work too well.
Jackie sounds like one of those..."Don't do as I do, do as I say", kinda fellas.
"France suffers from chronically high unemployment. I see a good number of French young people coming to Britain to find work because the labour market is so constricted."
Absolutely true.
This is the Achilles' Heel of the French model (and not national health insurance or the national pension plan, really): labor law is too inflexible and too based on the model of conflict between the social partners.
There is movement to make the labor law more flexible. For example, the infamous "35 Hours" legislation has been adjusted to allow for the shifting of hours from idle periods to busy periods. Nevertheless, more must be done and it is absolutely true that unemployment is THE problem facing France.
The solution to unemployment is to make the labor law less rigid, and the employment and dismissal laws more supple and reasonable. These changes will come slowly, because of the power of the resistance. But they are already coming, and will continue, precisely because unemployment must be reduced.
Say, didn't we help the UK kick the Franco-German axis' a$$ in WWII? Tony, all you gotta do is pick up the phone. Just look over your shoulder honey, ...
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