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| French get hammered in EU positions https://warthogterritory.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=6922 |
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| Author: | M21 Sniper [ 27 Aug 2004, 11:59 ] |
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French despair as British take top posts in EU By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Brussels (Filed: 27/08/2004) British bureaucrats are racking up one success after another in securing coveted posts in the new European Commission to the chagrin of the French, who have traditionally dominated it. Admired for a no-nonsense style, British fonctionnaires have secured a high profile as chiefs of staff in the team put together by José Barroso, the commission president. The quiet summer coup by the British has set off a fresh bout of soul-searching in Paris, where angst over lost influence at the heart of the European Union has become a part of daily discourse. Jean-Pierre Chevènement Jean-Pierre Chevènement, the former interior minister, said this week that France had been brushed aside with the dud job of transport commissioner while the Anglo-Saxon camp had walked off with all the prizes. "It's undeniable that the free-marketeers and Atlanticists have taken the lion's share in this commission," he told Le Figaro. With job selection barely beginning for the next five-year term, the British have netted the powerful cabinet jobs in the external relations, budget and trade directorates. The French are trailing so far with only one senior appointment: competition policy. It is a poor showing for a country that has always regarded the commission as a branch of its own civil service. The British-led "counter-revolution" in Brussels has been gathering pace with the arrival of the Austrians, Swedes and Finns over the past decade, but it has now shifted into a higher gear after the "Big Bang" enlargement of the former communist states in Eastern Europe. Michel Barnier, the foreign minister, tacitly acknowledged yesterday that France had paid a price for its high-handed treatment of the new EU states and failure to grasp that Paris no longer had the clout to impose diktats on Brussels. "France is not great when it is arrogant. It is not strong if it is alone," he told senior French ambassadors. "France certainly has to conduct its own diplomatic action without shrinking back, but it increasingly has need of others. And the first reflex, I say bluntly, must be European." Mr Barnier, a former commissioner, insisted that France still pulled lots of the levers behind the scenes in the EU system. "The decline of France? Loss in influence? Let's stop running ourselves down," he said. French officials hold the posts of president of the European Central Bank and the chief of the secretariat of the Council of Ministers, as well as retaining their stronghold over the powerful legal services across the EU apparatus. The French had 42 director-level posts at the end of 2003, compared to 27 for the British, but this is a lagging indicator of influence. The commission was set up as a replica of France's highly centralised civil service and was run by the same French official, Emile Noel, from 1958 to 1987. Use of English was banned in the press room until 1995. Almost a decade later it already seems another world. Heather Grabbe, from the European Reform Centre, said the British were now prized as top-notch administrators who got on with the job and resisted lobbying by national capitals. Among key appointments so far, Stephen Quest, a former Whitehall civil servant, has been named chef de cabinet of the Lithuanian budget commissioner, Dalia Grybauskaite. Patrick Child, chef de cabinet for foreign policy under Chris Patten, will retain the job under Austria's Benita Ferrero-Waldner. Simon Fraser, head of the Foreign Office's Middle East division, will take charge of the cabinet in the trade directorate for Peter Mandelson. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...world.html "I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum...and i'm all out of bubblegum". |
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| Author: | chadrewsky [ 27 Aug 2004, 12:28 ] |
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Just you watch...We will have another war on the account of the Europeans...May not be for a few hundred years or so, but those retards will start fighting one another again. The EU is bound to, and will fail. To many Europeans want to cling to their German, French, or Italian heritage...We do it in this country by Notre Dame playing USC... |
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