De Villepin can't swim
Whatever the merits or failings of French foreign policy during the Iraq crisis, there is no doubt that Dominique de Villepin, the French foreign minister, has emerged as a bit of a global star. Who can forget the eloquence and style of his presentation at the security council or the unprecedented ripple of applause that greeted him when he finished? Certainly not de Villepin's many female fans here in Brussels, who get regular opportunities to gawp at their hero-what with his appearances at meetings of European foreign ministers and at the constitutional convention. Not only is de Villepin dashingly good-looking, he is also a bit of a renaissance man in that irritating French way. Lesser breeds (well, alright, the Brits) look on glumly at the end of European summits as the French foreign minister reels off interviews in fluent English and Spanish. And in the copious free time that is left to him after doing daily battle with the American hyperpower, de Villepin likes to dash off books about Napoleon. So is there nothing this man cannot do? Actually, there is something. He can't swim. This emerged in early May when the Greek EU presidency scheduled a foreign ministers' meeting on a yacht and then on the island of Rhodes. While colleagues enjoyed bracing dips in a salt water pool, the god from France restricted himself to macho jogging. One of his loyal underlings revealed that the boss suffers from an advanced case of hydrophobia. Nor is this the only backbiting that can be heard from the Quai d'Orsay. Another of M de Villepin's diplomatic colleagues remarks sourly that he finds it faintly alarming that France's foreign minister is so fascinated by Napoleon's escape from Elba-a venture that moved swiftly from glamour and ?lan to final, catastrophic defeat.
Still, most French diplomats are far from ready to admit that their Iraq policy culminated in a diplomatic Waterloo. Advisers to Chirac are peddling the line that now is not the time to press for reconciliation with the US, since the Americans are under the pitiful illusion that their Iraq venture was a success. Sooner or later, muse the Chiracians hopefully, things will start to go pear-shaped in Iraq and the Americans will treat France with more respect. And don't count out a comeback from Napoleon, either.
EU still seeking an Iraq role
The French can at least enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that they were at the centre of events over Iraq. Not so the EU as a whole, which is still scratching around to find itself a role. One obvious area is humanitarian aid. The EU certainly has plenty to offer; indeed, it claims to be the world's largest aid donor. And so it was that shortly after the fall of Baghdad, the EU's humanitarian aid office, Echo, convened a lunch to brief journalists about the good works the Europeans are planning for Iraq. Over a "mosa?que d'asperges et lacets de saumon fum?," followed by "bar de ligne en beurre blanc," washed down with the impeccably Europhile Schengen pinot blanc, we noted the fact that the majority of the Iraqi population are dependent on food aid and speculated about the possibility of an outbreak of cholera in Basra. But let us not sneer at good intentions-at least Echo has cleaned up its act since that unfortunate period when the agency was accused of multi-million pound fraud and fabricating contracts. Now the only obstacle to putting EU money into action in Iraq appears to be the grudging attitude of the Americans. A Belgian air force plane, stuffed with EU humanitarian aid, was left cooling its engines on the tarmac in Brussels for a week, while the Americans denied it permission to fly into Baghdad-citing mysterious problems with its flight plan. What was that about magnanimity in victory?
Eurostar-the next Concorde?
News that Eurostar is in financial trouble can come as no surprise to those who regularly make the trek from London to Brussels. Frankly, there is little incentive to opt for a mode of travel that is both more expensive and more time-consuming than the plane. Sure, it is possible to get a cheap fare on the Eurostar-but only, it seems, if you book weeks ahead or are prepared to stay over a weekend. Anybody taking a trip at short notice in the middle of the week is liable to find that it is three times as expensive to go by rail as to fly. Once you board the train you are liable to be surrounded by galumphing backpackers and subject to baffling delays. Two recent examples: a train that never made it out of Waterloo because of technical problems and another stuck outside Lille for an hour, because of a "suspect package" on the platform.
Eurostar's dwindling band of defenders argue that it is a more civilised mode of travel-you can work, read, move and you end up in the centre of town. But I suspect that some of them are continuing to root for the Channel Tunnel for ideological reasons-because it is a symbol of European integration and of Anglo-French co-operation. The trouble is that co-operative hi-tech transport projects, while popular with politicians, do not come cheap. It is an unhappy coincidence that in the month that Eurostar's financial troubles were revealed, it was also announced that Concorde-an Anglo-French hi-tech project from another era-is going out of business. It was magnifique, but also too expensive to run profitably.
