France within an enlarged EU: a fading influence?

Sciences politiques | 6 pages | 05-03-2006 | Format : | Note : Non noté

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Résumé

Following the fifth enlargement and the appointment of the Barroso Commission, worries about a loss of influence in Europe have been widespread in France. The new members of Central and Eastern Europe have been deemed closer to Washington and London, and the French Commissioner, Jacques Barrot, has been given the minor transports portfolio – although he bears the title of Vice-President. French policymakers are worried that France, a founding member of the ECC, may find itself isolated in an enlarging Union. This concern is reinforced by a large trend in French public opinion, which considers European integration, and particularly the proposed draft Constitutional Treaty as being essentially neo-liberal and thus threatening what is called the French social model.

This essay will try to assess claims that French influence is vanishing, understanding influence as the capacity to have its favoured positions adopted at the EU level. It will argue that the task of capturing a country's influence within the EU has been complicated by the key features of the European Union: a multi-level type of governance and the progressive building of a polity. Therefore, France, a unitary state, has sometimes found it difficult to fit in, and still suffers from a lack of clout in key EU institutions, such as the European Parliament, whose influence is growing. Showing that influence within the European Union owes also to a country's particular culture, France also has negative prejudice towards the EU's consensual type of decision-making, which includes special interests.

After having looked at the difficult positioning for a unitary state like France within the European Union, we will study some recent markers of French influence ...

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