The Treaty
of Rome was signed in 1957, but it is only the past 30 years that France has
become used to living within a larger European land mass and single trading
area and sharing a currency with 18 other countries. Relinquishing some
national sovereignty started in 1985 with the Schengen agreement. In 1986 the
single European market legislation was introduced and in 1992 the Maastricht
treaty was signed and ratified. Shortly after the turn of the century, people
could travel across France’s borders with minimum immigration and customs
checks and no longer had to change francs into D-marks, lira or pesetas because
crisp Euro banknotes and freshly minted coins had supplanted them all. And, as Marine
Le Pen found out to her cost at the presidential election in May 2017, a majority
of the French have no desire to put the clock back.
At about
the same time that power in these crucial areas of national sovereignty was
being delegated upwards to supranational institutions, the government of France,
under François Mitterrand, started a process of delegating power downwards to
regional and local authorities. A policy
of decentralisation, initiated in 1982 was expanded in 2003 and again by François
Hollande’s landmark regional reform in 2014.
So what
then of the centralised state? Article 1 of the 1958 constitution of the Fifth
Republic states that “France is a republic
that is one and indivisible” – a notion that originated with the French
Revolution. An amendment stating that it has a “decentralised organisation” was
approved in 2003. Paradoxically though, instead of reducing the influence of
central government, as might be logically expected from a country that sets great
store by logic, decentralisation, instead of flattening and rationalising layers
of administration, has tended to pile them on top of each other. Many
considered for instance that the regional reform of 2014 was a golden opportunity
to dispense with the “département”, introduced by Napoleon Bonaparte, and delegate
more power to variable geometry rural or urban local authorities answering increasingly
to a larger regional authority. It was not to be. 22 regions were merged into 13
European-sized entities but “départements” survived, with their own governance and
specific powers. A prefect and sub-prefects are still in attendance to
represent the state. And although local authorities raise local taxes, they are
still heavily dependant on dwindling subsidies from central government to balance
their books.
The centralised
state is thus increasingly caught between two conflicting constraints. The current
reform proposals for the SNCF are a good illustration: within a few years,
regional authorities, that have now been given the powers to organise their own
transport needs, will be able to award tenders to competitors of the SNCF. Main
line rail services on the other hand will be increasingly influenced by the four
European Rail Packages to which France has finally, but reluctantly, agreed.
Would not
the logical conclusion be for France eventually to adopt a federal structure, with
the state limiting itself to a smaller number of policy areas like defence and
security, public finances, justice, possibly education, and health care? Some
of which would be carried out in in cooperation with other federal countries
within the EU?
Such an
outcome seems highly unlikely. For any such move would go seriously against the
grain of a country that has spent centuries building up and consolidating its
national unity. Shortly before his death in 1985, the famous historian, Fernand
Braudel, put it in the following terms in an interview with “Le Monde”: ……”(over
the centuries) France has expended its most precious resources to build itself
into a single entity..… in France’s identity, there is therefore this need for
concentration and centralisation against which it is dangerous to act.”
In the eyes
of the rest of the world, Emmanuel Macron passes for an energetic and reforming
President, but the truth is that in adapting France’s highly centralised and costly
state to the requirements of both European integration and regional decentralisation,
he has barely scratched the surface. Amidst all the crowing over the reduction in
2017 of France’s annual budget deficit to less than the Maastricht yardstick of
3% of GDP, for the first time in nearly 20 years, it has hardly been noticed that
growth-driven tax revenue can explain all of the improvement and that public
sector spending has barely fallen. It was still a record 45.4 % of GDP last year.
Spend some time, usually far longer than you would like, in any government office and
you will find that although computer screens have replaced ledgers and pen-pushers have become mouse-clickers, little else has changed in years. The
government has announced that public sector workers will soon be able to
volunteer, undoubtedly with a generous sweetener, to try their luck in the private
sector. The youngest and most ambitious may take up the offer. The others, in
the absence of any obligation, are more likely to stick to their job for life until
retirement. Whether their advantageous pension scheme will have been merged with
all the others by then, whether everyone in work in the public or private
sector, or self-employed, will get the same basic pension for the same level of
contribution remains to be seen. Macron had promised that reform for 2019 but
its timetable is already slipping. For the time being, railway workers are
about to go on strike to defend an employment contract that was initially
drafted in 1920 and are protesting about the possible effects of greater
competition on the railways. As to the long march towards greater integration
of the Euro area and the EU it will only happen on terms that France finds
acceptable - and that are not too far removed from its own proposals. As always,
most other Europeans would say.
It seems
fairly safe to assume therefore that, like a top-heavy super-tanker, the French
ship of state will sail slowly on, changing course only if it risks running out
of fuel or is rocked by an occasional violent storm. Jean Monnet was indeed wise
not to attach any deadline to his determination to bring about “an ever closer union among the
peoples of Europe.”