EU crisis deepens as France and Germany gang up on Britain

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.

In the first quarter of 2005 the French GDP grew by 0.2% and the great expectation (are you ready) was a giant 0.5% (sarcasm). Our US GDP for the first qurter of 2005 grwew by 3.7%, 18 times larger than your France GDP growth. You people have such miserable ambitions and expectations that you cannot even meet such low expectation.

You always come on this forum and try to make France a super power, you are nobody. You are farther away from being a super power than a Zimbabwe will be a super power. You have an unemployment rate of 10% in a nation of 60 million people, and it will be higher unemployment standards if you measure it by US standards, we have 5% unemploymnet rate in a nation of 300 million people. Even if we take your 2004 GDP figures that you economy grew by 2.1%, our economy grew by 4.5% in 2004. Do you know Vicomnet13 that the first seven companies in the US have a larger revenue than all the GDP of France? Do you know that our GDP of 11 trillions dollar is larger than all the 25 EU nations combined and 6 times that of France? Do you know that our military budget of 420 billions dollar a year constitute over 50% of the whole world military spending and it is 11 times higher that that of France? Do you know that we have far better standard of living because on average Americans make more money than people in France and 95% of EU, that we pay less taxes than you do in France and EU, and that everything is less expensive than France or anywhere in Western Europe?

Stop your delusion about the greatness and self importance of France, you are nobody but socialists losers and appeasers of terrorists.

"Do you know Vicomnet13 that the first seven companies in the US have a larger revenue than all the GDP of France?"

I did not know this.

What I do know is this:
The Seven Largest Companies in the US (Forbes, 2005)
Amounts are in billions of dollars of revenue.

1. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Bentonville, Ark., $258.681
2. Exxon Mobil Corp., Irving, Texas, $213.199
3. General Motors Corp., Detroit, $195.645
4. Ford Motor Co., Dearborn, Mich., $164.496
5. General Electric Co., Fairfield, Conn., $134.187
6. ChevronTexaco Corp., San Ramon, Calif., $112.937
7. ConocoPhillips, Houston, $99.468

Total of top 7 companies in US: $1,138 billion.

French GDP in 2004: $1,737 billion.

"Do you know that our military budget of 420 billions dollar a year constitute over 50% of the whole world military spending and it is 11 times higher that that of France?"

Of course I know that the US, the world's leading economy and military superpower, spends a great deal on its military. Of course, given the much larger US economy, France cannot possibly compete with such spending, nor does France need to. But I know, further, that France spends more on defense than any nation in NATO other than than US. And I know that France ranks third or fourth in the world in defense spending, after the US, China, and by some analyis, Japan (others place French spending slightly ahead of Japan). I invite you to read this report for the various numbers: http://www.fas.org/man/crs/RL32209.pdf

"Do you know that we have far better standard of living because on average Americans make more money than people in France and 95% of EU"

I know that on average Americans make more money than people in France. I do not know that this makes average Americans have better lives than the French. I have lived considerable periods in both places. In France, the food is consistently better, the coffee is always better, there is greater security and less fear of violence and attack. In America, the cars are bigger and people have multiples of things: more televisions, more cars and bigger plates full of food which is not as good. Big cups of bad coffee. Both places are pleasant to live, except the places in America that are unpleasant to live are positively terrifying, and the people there definitely have worse lives - because of fear and crime and the lack of educational systems that work - than the comparably poorly-off people in France. I know that both French people and American people live well. I do not observe that Americans live far better than the French, nor even, to tell you the truth, that they live better than the French. If one defines having more things as a better standard of living, then the Americans have a better standard of living than the French. If one defines having better food and coffee day after day, then the French live better than the Americans. I don't suppose that sex is quantified into the standard of living charts, but if it were, France would look no better on the charts than Americans, because all of the French would lie on the surveys, of course.

"that we pay less taxes than you do in France and EU, and that everything is less expensive than France or anywhere in Western Europe?"

Certainly housing is much more expensive in parts of America like New York and San Francisco than it is in Paris!As to paying less taxes in brut numbers, I think that is true. On the other hand, when one adds in the cost of things that Americans also have to spend money on, such as health insurance and retirement savings plans (IRAs and the similar), and college savings plans, I am not convinced that the Americans spend any less proportion than the French on these things. I do not think that it makes a difference to the individual whether the money from his pay goes into the Secu for health insurance coverage, or if it goes into the Aetna company for the same insurance. The money is spent either way. In the US it is not considered a "tax" and in France it is, but the money is not left to the individual either way.

"You always come on this forum and try to make France a super power, you are nobody...Stop your delusion about the greatness and self importance of France, you are nobody but socialists losers and appeasers of terrorists."

I come onto this form to present factual details about France, and commentary about the direction of things in France in order to discuss them. I labor under no illusions that France is a super-power. I often appreciate the discussions here, especially when I encounter kind and thoughtful American and French people who politely want to exchange information. I apologize that a nobody like me seems to have got you so vexed.

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