Sarko’s post-presidential woes

During France’s six-months presidency of the EU, Nicolas Sarkozy won widespread praise for his high-octane leadership. Just a few weeks after handing over the reins of power, though, some eurocrats are wondering aloud whether he is now destroying one of the EU’s most important achievements: the single market. With economic growth in France stalling and unemployment rising, Sarkozy is under pressure to show voters he is acting to stave off a depression. Whereas last year he could always convene an EU summit, Sarko is now restricted to domestic initiatives like his controversial €6bn plan to bail out the French car industry. Even before its details had been made public, though, the French president sparked a fierce dispute over protectionism by criticising the manufacturers who relocated abroad only to re-export their cars to France. “If we give the car industry money to restructure,” Sarkozy told French television viewers, “it is not to find out a new factory is being moved to the Czech Republic or elsewhere.”

Sarko’s comments shattered the veneer of EU unity in reaction to the economic crisis—and provoked a furious response from Mirek Topolánek, prime minister of the Czech Republic, which now holds the EU presidency. One senior Polish politician warned that Sarko had reopened the divisions between “old” and “new” Europe that his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, created. But the reaction of the Slovakian Prime Minister, Robert Fico, underlined the real risks of the Sarkozy stance. If French car-makers decided to quit Slovakia, Fico said, he’d send Gaz de France home. The row illustrates the growing fragility of the single market in the face of recession. Consumers may take its advantages for granted, but the downturn is prompting a significant rethink of European economic integration. The financial sector was the first to experience this when the Benelux banking group Fortis got into trouble last year. Spurning a cross-border rescue with the Belgians, the Dutch government decided to nationalise its Netherlands operations, so that Fortis has effectively been dismembered. If this is the reaction of governments in Holland and Belgium, two founder members of the EU and arch-supporters of European integration, the single market could be in for quite a battering.

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