The most important political job in Brussels after that of a commissioner is the chef de cabinet — the commissioner’s senior political adviser, who, as his ears and eyes, co-ordinates the policies that the European Union will propose for its 450 million citizens. The post is known by its French title — reflecting not only the Gallic administrative model adopted by the original six Common Market members, but the dominance, for a generation, of the Brussels bureaucracy by French Civil Service grandees. For France, those days of influence are decisively over. Not only has the new Commission, announced last month by José Manuel Durão Barroso, given France one of the least significant portfolios among the 25 commissioners; but now it emerges that only one Frenchman has been named a chef de cabinet, compared with three Britons, four Germans and two Spaniards and Dutchmen.
The loss of influence for France is inevit-able and overdue. Time was when Paris was able to use the EU machinery almost as an adjunct to its national policies. When Jacques Delors headed an interventionist Commission, President Mitterrand could count on Brussels to underpin his authority with initiatives that convinced voters that the EU served France’s interests first and then worried about the rest.
Arrogance, however, courts its own downfall. There has been a gradual accumulation of continental disdain for the practices and presumptions of Paris. French lost its monopoly at press briefings, when English was admitted, for the first time, as an alternative. An agricultural policy designed largely to benefit French farmers came under serious challenge — though it is still yet to be properly reformed. And the clichés of euro-enthusiasm and ever closer integration gave way to a widespread public resentment of the Francophile Brussels clique.
President Chirac has missed the bâteau. His assumption that he spoke for Europe in his rebukes of Eastern European entrants over Iraq caused widespread anger. His conviction that France and Germany would again win the day in promoting a federalist to succeed Romano Prodi misjudged the mood. And his rearguard battle to maintain the supremacy of French by banning French officials’ use of English in the Commission has antagonised the new entrants.
France could, perhaps, have won a heavyweight portfolio had M Chirac listened to pleas to renominate the capable Pascal Lamy. But instead, he sent a party hack to Brussels. Already the French are disconcerted at what they see as a UK victory over the constitution, a victory that is hardly complete. Their gradual loss of influence — already apparent with only one chef in the present Commission — has now been underlined. It would be foolish for the “Anglo-Saxons ” to gloat; the EU will work only if harmony reigns. But it is in Europe’s interest for France to understand that, like Latvia and Slovakia, it needs to be a solid, co-operative confrère.