By IRNA,
Paris : French officials said that they would use the presidency of the European Union to try to win over discontented voters in Europe by getting “back to basics,” like cushioning the impact of soaring food and fuel bills and protecting voters from globalization.
On the eve of the start of its six-month presidency, the officials made it clear that they would seek to reverse the recent no vote by Ireland in a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty to reorganize the EU and would press the Czech Republic to ratify the treaty.
“The European idea is in danger if we don’t protect Europeans,” President Nicolas Sarkozy said Monday as he promised to oppose the European Commission’s position in global trade talks.
Speaking on French television, Sarkozy attacked proposals in the trade negotiations that he said would reduce European farm production by one-fifth and cut agricultural exports by 10 percent.
Sarkozy also highlighted the problems caused for exporters by the high euro exchange rate with the dollar and said the European Central Bank should take account of economic growth, as well as its obligation to control inflation.
And in a surprisingly frank admission, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the no vote in Ireland illustrated how the EU had alienated its citizens by conducting politics in a manner they find incomprehensible.
“They understand nothing,” Kouchner said. “The institutions interest no one.” He argued that, in contrast, voters did appreciate that Europe “was not able to respond to the rise in the price of petrol.”
As for the jargon in which business in Brussels is conducted, “no one understands – including me,” said Kouchner, adding that it was time to “get back to basics.”
The comments Monday to journalists in Paris illustrate how the government there has interpreted the Irish vote as a vindication of efforts it was already promoting to protect Europeans from the impact of globalization.
That effort threatens to crystallize the debate within the EU between France on the one hand and more economically liberal nations like Britain.
France opposes moves, promoted by Britain, to scale back the Common Agricultural Policy, which consumes more than 40 percent of the EU’s budget, and Paris plans a review or “health check” of farm spending before the end of the year.
President Nicolas Sarkozy made clear last month his discontent with the way that the EU’s trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, has conducted the Doha Development Round of global trade talks.
Trade ministers are to meet later this month in Geneva, and one senior French official said Monday that Europe had made sacrifices in agricultural policy but had received nothing in return in market access for industrial goods or services.