Western Europe's America Problem

July/August 2007 Historically Speaking 41 French unemployment has dropped nearly two percentage points. France has an inflexible labor market , partly due to rigid labor laws and rules. Changing these laws and rules could make a difference in employer and consumer confidence. The now successful Germans were long written off for being hopelessly stuck in inefficient corporatism and crippled by debts from reunification. A few relatively small labor market reforms (controversial enough to cost Gerhard Schröder his job, however) plus the efficient ways in which German corporatism managed to squeeze down wages, have regenerated confidence and revved up the machine. Something like this in France is not out of the question. The presidential campaign was remarkably quiet about international matters. Sarkozy did make clear that he favored shrinking the ill-fated European Constitutional Treaty down to a "mini-treaty" that could be passed without a new referendum. Sarkozy has in mind stripping the existing document to a minimum of key propositions and amputating its "constitutional" pretensions. This approach was remarkably successful at the June 2007 EU summit when Sarkozy emerged as a key deal broker behind German Chancellor Angela Merkel, helping to begin a process that may liberate the EU from its present state of paralysis. Many other EU leaders are also quietly pleased with Sarkozy's rejection of Turkish EU membership, although few will confess to this. In addition, Sarkozy has pledged to shake up, if not end, France's longstanding postcolonial practices in its African ex-colonies. He has also proposed a "Mediterranean Union" that would link countries around the Mediterranean shores, although what this means remains to be explained, even if it is redolent of failing EU "neighborhood" policies. Many of the Gaullist premises of French foreign policy also need rethinking. But the idea that Sarkozy will take on the Quai d'Orsay on anything fundamental is far-fetched, even if Bernard Kouchner , the new foreign affairs minister, may have passionate words to say about this. Sarkozy's expressed desire that Europe should be more proactive in protecting Europeans from globalization is backed by a track record of protecting French big business, and this has elicited much liberal ink and indignation . His advocacy of reining in the European Central Bank and obliging it to pay more attention to Eurozone member states is a no-no inside Brussels and Frankfurt beltways. The new president has already been put on warning by European Central Bank and Commission budgetary specialists for initial tax and spend inclinations that could put France again outside Eurozone limits for deficits and perhaps precipitate fireworks. There will be issues in Europe, therefore. Finally, Sarkozy's (and Kouchner 's) fondness for America notwithstanding, the new president is unlikely to be an easy ally. Sarkozy is a combative character, and he is French. French and American interests have not been, and will not be, always the same. As Sarkozy has himself underlined , friends must learn to deal with other friends when they don't agree. George Ross is Morris Hillquit Professor in Labor and Social Thought and director of the Centerfor German and European Studies at Brandeis University . He is the author of, among many other works, Jacques Delors and European Integration (Polity/Oxford University Press, 1995). Western Europe's America Problem* Andrei S. Markovits When my father and I arrived in the United States as immigrants from Romania —by way of Vienna—in the summer of 1960, we spent a number of weeks living with American families in the greater New York area. Some wereJews, like us; most were not. But all spoke some German because our English was virtually nonexistent at the time. What impressed me to no end, and will always remain with me, was how all those people adored my Viennese-accented German, how they reveled in it, found it elegant, charming, and above all oh-so-cultured. For business and family reasons, my father had to return to Vienna, where I attended the Theresianische Akademie, one of Austria's leading gymnasia. The welcome accorded to me in that environment was much colder and more distant than it had been in the United States, not by dint of mybeing a Tschusch and...