Global Insight: Europe needs stars’ comeback

Like two film stars with a glorious past, Germany and France need a new script to revive their partnership and bring the audiences back in Europe. De Gaulle and Adenauer Make Peace was a box-office hit, but it came out in 1963. What Europe really needs, in the light of the global financial crisis, is a sequel to 1999’s The Single Currency. Of course, more actors jostle on the European set these days – a total of 27, compared with only six in the 1960s and 15 as late as 2003. This makes it impractical and probably unwise for Germany and France to seek informal overlordship of the European Union. Something more subtle is required than the duumvirate of Helmut Schmidt and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in the 1970s, or of Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand from 1982 to 1995. But a look at other possible options underlines how there is no substitute for Franco-German co-operation and leadership. After the UK joined the EU – or the Common Market, as it was known – in 1973 and especially after Tony Blair became British prime minister in 1997, some hoped for a European cockpit with three co-pilots. But the UK shattered such illusions by refusing to board flights to destinations such as the euro and the Schengen passport-free travel regime. The dream will surely recede still further if David Cameron’s Conservatives, with their deep-rooted Eurosceptic instincts, replace Gordon Brown’s Labour government after next year’s UK election. A second idea, aired two years ago by Nicolas Sarkozy, French president, was for a “Big Six” EU club. Taking account of the bloc’s enlargement into central and eastern Europe, the club was to have included Poland as well as France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. This proposal attracts even less interest today than it did at birth. Italy has drifted to the EU’s sidelines thanks to the hullabaloo over Silvio Berlusconi’s sex life, his idiosyncratic style of government and his threat last week to block EU business unless European commissioners stop speaking in public.

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