France is threatening to unite with Germany to maintain their influence in an enlarged European Union and strengthen their common front against the United States, according to reports yesterday. Foreign minister Dominique de Villepin was quoted by Le Monde speaking explicitly about "Franco-German union" and to have called the further deepening of ties between the countries "the one historic challenge we cannot lose". Le Monde gave most of its first three pages to reports on the proposed union, noting that it was an idea whose time might have come. Pascal Lamy, one of France's EU commissioners, spoke enthusiastically of the...