Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
05PARIS6439
2005-09-21 15:04:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Paris
Cable title:  

FRENCH REACTION TO GERMAN ELECTION RESULTS; MOSTLY

Tags:  PREL PGOV FR GM EUN 
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C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 PARIS 006439 

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/31/2014
TAGS: PREL PGOV FR GM EUN
SUBJECT: FRENCH REACTION TO GERMAN ELECTION RESULTS; MOSTLY
ABOUT US


Classified By: PolMC Josiah Rosenblatt for reasons 1.4 (B & D).

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 PARIS 006439

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/31/2014
TAGS: PREL PGOV FR GM EUN
SUBJECT: FRENCH REACTION TO GERMAN ELECTION RESULTS; MOSTLY
ABOUT US


Classified By: PolMC Josiah Rosenblatt for reasons 1.4 (B & D).


1. (C) Summary: By and large, French politicians have
interpreted the results of the German elections through
purely partisan lenses -- and with an eye on the 2007
presidential elections in France. They find in this
weekend's results across the Rhine primarily cautionary
lessons against party splintering and an over-ambitious
reform agenda that would call into question the French and
German social models. Foreign Ministry and international
affairs commentators are concerned more with the prospects
for re-energizing the Franco-German couple as the "motor of
Europe" to overcome current EU paralysis following French and
Dutch rejection of the constitutional treaty. The French
public seems largely to have shrugged off the way the French
media has dramatized a "crisis of power" in Germany, given
that the German parliamentary system is very different from
the French presidential system. That said, Germany's current
parliamentary gridlock, to the degree that it is seen as
democratically reflecting a fragmented and divided public,
torn between the need for reform and fears of its
consequences, mirrors the quandary in which the French
electors also find themselves. End summary.

Fear of reform
--------------


3. (C) French politicians and commentators have almost
uniformly viewed the German elections through the prism of
the politics of reform. Defense Minister Michelle
Alliot-Marie's asserted in a TV interview that German voters
had clearly rejected a fully "liberal" (that is, free-market)
social model by not giving CDU leader Angela Merkel a clear
mandate for change. As a Chirac loyalist and supporter of
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin in his ambition to
succeed Chirac, Alliot-Marie's point was that the French
should prefer Villepin and his program of "social growth,"
aimed at adapting and preserving the French social model, to
the more radical reforms advocated by Interior Minister
Nicolas Sarkozy.


4. (C) Sarkozy himself has asserted the importance of France
and Germany being "in phase" with each other, with his calls
for reform echoing those of Merkel on the other side of the

Rhine. There is a general sense here that Merkel clearly
underestimated the fears that her calls for more radical
economic reform would engender among a German electorate
loath to lose its comforts and entitlements. This translates
in France to a warning signal for Nicolas Sarkozy that his
strategy of a dramatic break with the past, based on a more
"Anglo-Saxon" and "liberal" economic vision, may not be in
phase with a clear majority of the French electorate, either.

Fear of splintering
--------------


5. (C) The rise of the smaller parties in Germany has also
given rise to reflections about the dangers of a split within
the main parties, along the lines of those who voted for or
against the EU constitutional treaty. Bernard Accoyer, head
of the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP),conceding
that "the divided state of German society parallels that of
French society," warned against divisions that could bring
"disproportionate" influence to extremist factions. Many
mainstream politicians in France fear that tensions within
the center-right and center-left in France could potentially
lead, given France's two-round presidential system and its
tradition of large protest votes, to the unexpected victory
(at least in the first round) of a marginal candidate from
the far right or the far left (such as happened in the last
elections, when Jean-Marie Le Pen shocked France by polling
better than Socialist Party candidate Lionel Jospin).


6. (C) In the case of the UMP, the latter split boils down
to the competition between PM de Villepin, increasingly
regarded as President Chirac's heir in waiting, and Interior
Minister Sarkozy with his calls for more of a break with the
politics of the past. An independent candidacy by whichever
one of them is not designated by the UMP could prove
catastrophic for the center-right. Among the socialists,
there exists the (lesser) risk of a split between the
centrist party leadership led by Party Secretary Francois
Hollande (and including heavyweights such as Dominique
Strauss-Kahn and Jack Lang) and the anti-EU leftists whom
former PM Laurent Fabius is attempting to bring under his
wing.

Fears of a paralyzed EU
--------------


7. (C) As would be expected, the Foreign Ministry has
insisted that the GOF is prepared to work together with
whatever German government is formed. Catherine Colonna, the
Minister-Delegate responsible for European relations, has
affirmed publicly that the elections will have no impact on
bilateral relations. She has also stressed that, now as
before, the Franco-German relationship can be expected to
continue to act as the creative "motor" for the European
Union. But it is difficult for many here to imagine how a
weak German coalition government can contribute to overcoming
the current crisis in the EU following demise of the European
constitutional treaty. The failure of the German elections
to produce either a clear mandate for liberal reforms or a
clear mandate against them leads to the conclusion here that
the Franco-German couple, and by extension the EU itself,
will only muddle along at least until after the 2007 French
presidential elections.

Fears of too much democracy
--------------


8. (C) Calls have been growing in France for some time,
largely in reaction to President Chirac's quasi-monarchial
dominance of all government institutions, to introduce more
democracy through a system of proportional representation.
The muddled results of the German elections, with their
complicated proportional system and variable coalition
geometries, will reinforce the view in France that it is
better to err on the side of clarity and effective government
(for a notoriously "ungovernable" people),even if this
occurs at the expense of slightly less democracy. Former
President Giscard d'Estaing's first take on the results was
that they showed the wisdom of the French two-round and
British first-past-the-post systems, which are designed to
guarantee unambiguously a winner.

France is different
--------------


9. (C) Whatever the lessons to be found in the German
elections, one cannot discount French exceptionalism. France
does not automatically follow German or other European
electoral trends. Indeed, as the President of the National
Assembly's USA-France Friendship Group, Axel Poniatowski
recently told the Ambassador, historically France and Germany
have never been "in phase," to use Sarkozy's term. If one
had a leftist government, the other tilted to the right, and
vice versa. In sum, for a variety of reasons, not the least
of which are structural, it thus seems unlikely that the
muddled outcome of the German elections can or will be
reproduced in France.


Please visit Paris' Classified Website at:
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/paris/index.c fm
STAPLETON