Reflecting the disarray after last week's failed European Union summit meeting, leaders throughout the Continent have unleashed new criticism of one another, promoting their own visions for the future of Europe.In a sign that France was not ready to compromise on money matters, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin on Tuesday castigated the British government for demanding a generous rebate every year from the bloc.
"This British check - and I say this with all the friendship I carry for the British people - is truly an expense from the Old Regime," Villepin commented in a session of the National Assembly. For good measure, he called the rebate of about $6 billion a year "a legacy of the past, an obsolete legacy, no longer with any purpose."
By contrast, Villepin defended the billions of dollars in subsidies French farmers receive every year from the European Union as "a major asset for Europe and for France," and denounced what he called Britain's "groundless accusations" on the subject. Villepin was named prime minister in a cabinet shake-up three weeks ago after the rejection by French voters of the European constitution, and his verbal assault Tuesday underscored the determination of the government of President Jacques Chirac to blame outside forces - particularly Britain - for the worst crisis in European integration in decades.
Before the May 29 referendum, widely regarded here as both a rejection of the French government and its troubled economy as well as of European unification, Chirac had said that France would be the "black sheep" if voters said no. Now, however, Chirac seems determined to change the subject by portraying himself as a white knight leading Europe into the future through his heavily subsidized farmers and accusing his British counterpart of taking much-needed funds from the 10 new members of the bloc, all of them relatively poor countries.
In a postmidnight news conference after talks on the Union's long-term budget failed Friday night, Chirac called the farm subsidy system "modern" and "dynamic." Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, by contrast, has branded the farm subsidies an anachronism that sucks much-needed EU financing from research and development in areas like biotechnology and the promotion of small businesses. In London on Tuesday, Blair, unlike de Villepin, struggled to sound conciliatory. He said he was ready to recognize that Britain's rebate is "an anomaly that has to go." But he reiterated that such a gesture was possible only if "the other anomaly" was changed - that is, the expenditure of 40 percent of the EU budget on farm subsidies.
The reverberations from the two rejections of the constitution and last week's contentious summit meeting in Brussels are still being felt throughout the Continent. In Poland, President Alexander Kwasniewski announced the postponement of his country's constitution referendum, which was planned for October. In Brussels, many officials are pessimistic that Blair, who assumes the EU's rotating six-month presidency on July 1, will be able to broker a deal on its long-term budget. They cite demands of the richer countries to keep their financial benefits or to pay less and concern that Blair will not be trusted to act for the benefit of all.
In a speech in Berlin on Tuesday, the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, who blamed Britain and to a lesser extent the Netherlands for the failure of the summit meeting, attacked Britain's "social model" and its vision of Europe, which is at odds with the cradle-to-grave social welfare systems of much of the Continent. "There is a special European social model to protect that has developed on the Continent," Schröder said, without mentioning Britain. "Those who want to destroy this model due to national egoism of populist motives do a terrible disservice to the desires and rights of the next generation." The verbal attacks during and after the summit meeting have been so angry, sharp, and unusual that it is not clear that relationships of trust will be restored.