A few hours after taking office on May 15th 2012, François Hollande, the new French president, rushed to Berlin to meet with the German Chancellor. The name of his prime minister had just been announced, not even his full government. There was no time to waste. For all the parochialism of the French presidential campaign, Europe could not wait. It may be only a part of the country’s problems, but it has always been a key to their solution, and Germany the indispensable partner.

Unfortunately for the French, their cardinal election had not given them a chance to hear the full story. The socialist candidate kept promising he would never surrender to Berlin, he would twist Madame Merkel’s arm in a wink and renegociate the fiscal austerity pact Sarkozy had agreed to. Isn’t France the founding mother of the Union, the homeland of Monnet, Schumann and Delors, and its second largest economy? Nothing is possible in Europe without France, François Hollande solemnly declared. True. But nothing is possible in France without Europe either.

Asserting himself for years as the spiritual heir of Jacques Delors, the former « grand homme » of the European Commission, François Hollande has always vouched to be « a true European ». Yet, in his presidential platform, the European chapter was short and read like wishful thinking : we must create growth, we must launch eurobonds, we must have a more balanced relationship with Germany… In fact, the French left has long reeled from its divisions over the 2005 European referendum. In charge of the Socialist party at the time, Hollande was supporting it but was unable to prevent Fabius, a former prime minister and now his foreign minister, from fighting against it, alongside with the leftist fringe of the party. The French rejected the treaty, and Europe marks the new President’s worst political scar. It ached again earlier this year when socialist MPs split in Parliament over the last Eurozone treaty: most of them abstained, some voted against. But victory is the best way to heal. Francois Hollande has brought his party back to the Elysée 17 years after Mitterrand, his role model. Now he calls the tune. But which one ?

KRONIKEN PÅ DANSKFrankrig og Europa er hinandens forudsætninger

The French are troubled in this globalized world. They don’t quite understand where their country now stands on the map. The most pessimist nation in Europe if not in the world, according to a recent Gallup survey, they wonder about grandeur, exceptionalism, and its unique historical role. « France is not a problem, it is a solution to problems ! » Hollande boasted at the start of his campaign. For months, the French had complained the real issues were not being addressed. In fact, they didn’t really want to hear. For months, France became self-obsessed, disconnected, protected as it were from the outside world by an imaginary « ligne Maginot », the ill-fated fortifications in the 1930s. The two main candidates, Sarkozy and his socialist challenger, talked only about domestic issues : education, unemployment – major concerns of course – but also religious rituals for slaughtering meat, city rules for swimming pools, and the price of gas. And inevitably they praised « la République »… the favourite incantation of all French politicians competing in historical and litterary references - Victor Hugo, Jaurès, Blum, Emile Zola… Elation over a glorious past and the haze of nostalgia help forget the uncomfortable complexities of current times. Nothing was said about China, India, BRICS or Africa, global warming, the resources of the planet, demography. Not a word about structural reforms, the national debt, the need for a leaner state, the difficulties of maintaining a generous welfare system without reforming it. No mention of Europe’s historical and political prowess, the progress the Union has brought to our economies and our standards of living, no explanation of the eurozone ordeals as they were escalating, no mention of the efforts needed to try and contain them.

True, at the beginning of his campaign, Nicolas Sarkozy told the French they had to copy Germany and undergo Gerhard Schröder’s reforms – a Socialist who supports him, he added to no avail. After Marine Le Pen’s score on April 22, his rethoric changed radically : Europe became the scapegoat, the Schengen agreements had to be reconsidered, borders reestablished as well as protectionnism in order to protect us against foreign invasion. The outgoing president also warned about the country collapsing like Greece or Spain in case of his challenger’s victory. As to Hollande, he didn’t say much at all– his favourite and successful tactics to escape potentially divisive issues. In fact, the only candidates who talked constantly about the EU are viscerally opposed to its very existence : Marine Le Pen on the extreme right, Jean-Luc Mélenchon on the extreme left. Together, on the first round, they gathered as much as 30 % of the votes.

Add the silent minority within the conservative as well as the socialist parties – those who in 2005 voted against the Constitutional treaty – and you will get the picture of a nation more divided about Europe than it is politically correct to admit. Even if most of the elites, the business and financial community, a majority of citizens – the old who remember history, the young who look for hope beyond borders – support the European process, the malaise is there and doubt is growing about its benefits.

France has not yet experienced the pains of austerity and structural reforms, but the French are convinced they are. They blamed Sarkozy either for having launched some indispensable changes, like pension age, or for not having pursued them far enough. Both he and Hollande indulged in bashing the rich, the elites, the banks, and the excesses of « the liberal market economy ». No surprise, given the fact that one French out of three is convinced that capitalism is a bad system which should be abolished (Ifop poll, 2011). One of the basic reasons for the growing anti-EU movement stems from the idea that another Europe is possible, less market-driven, less liberal, more oriented towards state intervention and social solidarity. The French have loved Europe as long as they were convinced it was like a larger France, true to the same cultural and political precepts. As the economy weakened and the need for structural reforms became more obvious, the Union became an easy scapegoat, even for those politicians who would contribute in Brussels to the regulations they would criticize at home. Though not a rigid Keynesian, Hollande is no market-oriented liberal either– you wouldn’t find many of those even among French conservatives. During the campaign, he called for growth to be sustained by public spending on infrastructure and new technologies – he explicitly ruled out any loosening of the labour code and called for stricter regulations on lay-offs and outsourcing. Yet he is not an ideologue – he is certainly the only leader capable to bring the French socialist party closer at long last to the common European social-democrat model. He is a man of consensus and compromise – he was indeed blamed in the past for being too much so. Having been underestimated for so long by friends and foes alike, « Monsieur le Président normal » now takes his revenge, Which way will he go ? He knows, and his countrymen too, that mercy will soon be over - no « état de grâce », even if so far financial markets have reacted very calmly to his nomination. The crash between campaign promises and reality is bound to come.

The composition of Hollande’s first government reflects his political skill, but does not reveal any clear orientation in terms of European policies. Both the minister of foreign affairs - Fabius, the only « éléphant » from the old guard – and the undersecretary for European affairs campaigned against the 2005 referendum. Optically, those among Hollande’s supporters who keep rejecting the EU one way or another, feel they are represented at the best level. In fact, European affairs are primarily conducted by Pierre Moscovici, the Economy and Finance minister, a staunch pro-European, under the leadership of the Elysée and of Jean-Marc Ayrault, the prime minister, himself a EU supporter and germanophile.

Hollande’s first performance in Brussels, at an informal leaders’ dinner last May, proved to be good political showmanship. The self-proclaimed champion of growth versus austerity arrived hand in hand with Italian Premier Mario Monti – not quite your typical leftist economist –, after having cajoled conservative Mariano Rajoy at the Elysée earlier in the day. There was no Franco-German pre-summit reunion Merkozy style, no premise of Frangela or Merhollande in the making. Hollande kept pushing for eurobonds in spite of Merkel’s stern rebuttal, but he did not mention once the need to renegociate the fiscal compact treaty, one of his favourite anti-Sarkozy arguments during the campaign.

This could have been the kind of compromise Paris was hoping for if Madame Merkel becomes more open on Eurobonds and the mutualization of public debts. The French president has been seeking support to that end from the SPD – the Chancellor’s opposition party which could possibly become part of a new coalition after the German general election next year. But Paris has to face facts : there is no way Berlin would agree to pay for the spendthrift Southern Europeans, including the French, without concrete steps towards structural reforms.

The problem with policymaking in our democracies is that it has to accommodate conflicting priorities at an accelerated pace. As Greece is on the brink of chaos and Spanish banks go down the drain, Hollande and his team, preoccupied with parliamentary elections, are oddly out of tune. True, the results will determine their margin of manoeuver, particularly on Europe. If the « anti-EU » parties score on June 17 - the Greens, undisciplined members of the government, and Marine Le Pen’s extreme right which might enter Parliament - it will be even more difficult for Hollande and Ayrault to champion the mix of reforms-cum-growth policies which Berlin could eventually subscribe to.

Early June, Chancellor Merkel demonstrated she is indeed the only European leader capable of political initiative. With the support of the opposition party SPD after a deal over the financial transactions tax, she did not mince words: if the Eurozone countries want to save their currency and some of the members, they have to agree on a more federal approach. Europe should go for a two-speed Union, with the faster group seeking deeper integration such as a fiscal union to complement monetary union. “We need more Europe, we need not only a monetary union, but we also need a so-called fiscal union, in other words more joint budget policy,” Merkel said according to Bloomberg. “And we need most of all a political union - that means we need to gradually give competencies to Europe and give Europe control.” It may be a long-term complicated process, it is a political warning shot to Paris.

François Hollande has no choice but to answer. An European summit is set for the end of June. « Everything has to be put on the table ! », the French President insisted. He may seek a text complementing the fiscal compact and emphasizing growth, the way Lionel Jospin did in 1997 when he threatened not to sign the Amsterdam treaty - it didn’t change much, but looked like a political victory. In turn, the Chancellor needs to adjust to the overall claim for growth and show some flexibility as long as the fiscal austerity doctrine is not put in denial.

Time is running short by the day. From Greece to Spain and Ireland, those European citizens who suffer from stifling austerity measures are calling for hope. Financial markets need daily reassurance. « France is a great country, the new French President declared in his inauguration speech early May. It is up to us to forge a new path for Europe ! » Yes, but which one ? And with whom?

For the past 50 years, French and German leaders have been compelled to get along. Some did so famously, whatever their political affiliations. The Union has gone forward, albeit in its unique, haphazard way. Europe cannot keep crumbling down. It is time for responsible leadership on each side of the Rhine.