The controversy about the presence of the European flag above the Unknown Soldier tomb under the Triumph Arch is revealing of the limits of the French people adhesion to Europe. What has hurt was the disappearance of the French flag in an emblematic place of their history. Europe, yes, but definitely not if that makes France disappearing. These good sense considerations have been forgotten by these who have taken that decision. That has lead to the opposite effect from the sought-after objective and has provoked an opinion rejection instead of a celebration of the moment when the country was taking the presidency of the European Union.
The European issue has always been an essential point in the nation political life, provoking sometimes crisis, as during the general De Gaulle empty chair policy and his opposition to the United Kingdom adhesion or when tensions hurt the European monetary System during the Eighties. The management, after the Berlin Wall fall, of the admission of the former European Eastern countries was more consensual but dissensions remained tough: the referendum about the Maastricht Treaty and the creation of the unique currency was adopted with a short majority but the one about the project of an European constitution was rejected. Nobody is contesting the fact that for the first time in its history, Europe leaves in peace for near a century but that is not anymore enough and the balance between the given advantages and the expressed critics is delicate.
The most spectacular success has been without any doubt the creation of the euro and its management by the European Central Bank. The French economy would never have been able to overcome, as it is doing it, the crisis resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. So the government has been able to decide and to put into practice the “whatever it costs” and to finance without difficulties the huge public deficits with interest rates near zero. Without the euro, when in the same time the country has a foreign deficit very important, that wouldn’t have been possible. The direct call, without going through European institutions, to financial markets in a context of an inflation rebound would have provoked a brutal increase both of the interest rates and future very heavy budget charges along with a depreciation of the national currency with all the consequences that implies to French people assets.
The critics regarding the unique currency, which have not stopped despite the sanitary crisis, have been related to two issues. The project was supposed to create the feeling to belong to a common entity, to strengthen the influence of Europe in the world and to generate a larger economic and financial integration. That idealistic vision has not been shown in the reality but was it realistic? Money is an essential tool of the economic policy as it has just proved it but why to ask more to it? Members States having structural characteristics as demography, the availability or not of natural resources or again geographic localizations, it is logical they adapt their economic policies to these situations. But the solving of the 2012 euro crisis has shown that it was possible to overpass the difficulties coming from a not large enough convergence of the economic policies.
The other brought up to criticize the euro is that it would have mainly served German interests through slowing its increase and favoring their exports but in remaining too high for French enterprises can take profit of it. This point doesn’t make sense since an important share of the related States exports is done inside this zone. Especially, that has not impeached Italy to have like Germany a very large surplus of its trade balance. The weakness of the France external trade is due neither to the euro nor to labor costs but to the culture of the business executives which privileges de-localizations and mergers and acquisitions operations instead of being committed first to products and clients.
But everything is not perfect in Europe and the current energy crisis provides a good example of what must not be done. Rules adopted by Brussels lead to a huge electricity prices increase which the State had to partly take in charge to support enterprises and household when, thanks to nuclear power, France would have been protected. They are the criteria decided in the energy transition policy which force there again France to make enormous efforts to fulfill them when our country is only the 21st nation in the world regarding CO2 emissions and if we refers ourselves to per inhabitant emissions, France is only the 70th nation.
The choice to take as the reference year 1990 for the reductions of the emissions is perverse because it is the year of German reunification. As more than half of the plants localized in the East were highly polluting and would have to be closed in any case since it was impossible to modernize them, the country can offer a flattering evaluation of its emissions evolution when it remains the worst country in Europe for its greenhouse gas emissions. The reservations Brussels keeps to recognize that the nuclear power must be included among the energy sources able to benefit from privileged financing regarding the energy transition is there too disputable and is influenced by Germany pressures, the country having decided for local political considerations, to close its power plants. Renewable being intermittent, it will be necessary to keep natural gas and coal power plants and so to emit greenhouse gas and particles dangerous for health.
The mechanisms used to determine energy prices are quite also disputable. Regarding natural gas, it is a commodity whose prices obey to world markets rules. But it is not the same for power which is locally produced. So the fossil prices increases will have to be passed on power prices when it is produced with these sources. But that wouldn’t be the case when electricity has a hydraulic or a nuclear source for instance. But the rules imposed by Brussels inflect a double penalty to France. First, power producers have the right to buy to EDF at a price which is a much lower price than the market ones the power they will sell to their customers. Next, the State, with an amount now estimated to near 8 billion euro, had to compensate these prices increases during the sanitary crisis in order they are not passed on enterprises, which would affect their competitiveness and to household to protect their purchasing power.
The electricity markets liberalization imposed by Brussels makes, in France, only losers. Instead of benefiting from the fantastic advantage offered by the nuclear power production, France is constrained to much more investing to reduce its emissions and the State must spend considerable amounts of money to cope with the energetic crisis when the French economy was, in that domain, in advance thanks to its very competitive power mix with low CO2 emissions.
The French presidency will be too short to reform, during its mandate, the disputable policies as in energy and climate even if we must hope that progresses will be accomplished. But the opportunity must not to be lost in France to better explain Europe to France people and to make them loving it.