Main focus of Monday, March 12, 2007

The end of the Chirac era

The French president Jacques Chirac announced on March 11th that he will not be presenting his candidacy at the next presidential election. The European press evaluates his two consecutive mandates at the head of the French State.

De Standaard - Belgium

"This is the end of twelve years of presidency and a forty-five year political career. It is also the first time in the 5th Republic that a French president is voluntarily handing over power", notes Franck Renout, the daily's Paris correspondent. "Chirac was never an ideologist. While the world was changing, its borders opening, economies being liberalised, the president did his best to manage France's historical, cultural and economic legacy. People even jest that the museum of primitive art in Paris, the Quai de Branly Museum, is the one and only tangible result that Chirac has come up with in his own country. The past few years have indeed shown no ideology, no vision, no mission for the future." (12/03/2007)

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Der Standard - Austria

The outgoing French President Jacques Chirac was popular because politically he was without fear, notes Stefan Brändle. His popularity "was perhaps increased by the fact that he didn't even try to pretend to voters that he had a political agenda... But the French knew: just as Chirac always puts himself first, he will also always put his country first. His political agenda was called France. Chirac was neither a left-winger nor a right-winger; he was a Gaullist, or in other words, a passionate Frenchman. Just as his first decision after he took office in 1995 was to schedule nuclear tests in the South Pacific without caring about the opposition of the international community, at his last EU summit three days ago he tried to sell off France's nuclear power supply as renewable energy." (12/03/2007)

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Financial Times - United Kingdom

"Most analysts agree that 'Chiraquisme', apart from supporting farmers, does not stand for much", writes Martin Arnold. "An eternal opportunist, [Jacques Chirac] has flip-flopped on many big issues, including European Union enlargement, free market capitalism, the euro and the 35-hour working week. He promised voters in 1995 that he would end the 'fracture sociale', but unemployment remains high among the unskilled and a largely Muslim immigrant community remains poorly integrated. ... Yet even his critics concede he did some things right. He is widely praised for admitting France's responsibility for deporting Jews during German occupation in the Second World War and in 2003 led 'Old Europe' in opposing the US-led invasion of Iraq and warned of the dangers of American unilateralism." (12/03/2007)

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Les Echos - France

The editorialist Françoise Fressoz considers that Chirac's presidency was marked by "two political catastrophes: the failed dissolution in 1997 and the 'no' vote in the referendum on the European Constitutional Treaty, both of which revealed the same weakness. Jacques Chirac did not know how to give a sense of purpose to the European adventure. Last night he tried to make up for lost time by solemnly declaring, 'it is vital that we pursue the construction of Europe. Our future is at stake.' But why did he not say so earlier?! The paradox is that we would be hard put to name another president in the history of the Republic who was as open to the world as he. His obstinate rejection of the war in Iraq, which has now owed him a flood of kudos after a torrent of criticism, came from his desire to avoid a clash of civilisations at all cost." (12/03/2007)

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Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - Germany

Michaela Wiegel discerns "two ruptures in French foreign policy" which appeared during Chirac's term in office. "The first rupture, the quarrel with America over the war in Iraq, was consciously brought about by Chirac. The second was France's renunciation of the European integration process... It was Chirac, whose political career was so deeply influenced by the Cold War, who broke away from the thought patterns of the era, in which maintaining a balance between the blocks was the main objective. For the first time since the Suez crisis of 1956, Chirac risked breaking the alliance of solidarity with America when, in the midst of the Iraq crisis, he threatened to exercise France's power of veto in the UN Security Council. France's attempts to unite the great powers of Russia and China, European partners like Germany and Belgium, and a number of Latin American and African states in a kind of counter-alliance were without precedent. Unlike Gerhard Schröder, who was fighting for votes, Chirac - well-versed in foreign policy - wasn't just trying to endorse the pacifist impulses of his fellow countrymen." (12/03/2007)

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Lidové noviny - Czech Republic

Milan Rokos describes French President Jacques Chirac as a person who defended, but also blocked Europe and "one of the last dinosaurs in European politics." Rokos delivers an ambivalent verdict of Chirac's policies regarding the Czech Republic: "He supported the expansion of the EU to encompass the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. But when the newcomers sided with the Americans on the Iraq issue he arrogantly let them know that they had 'wasted a good opportunity for remaining silent.' Nor did he ever much like the liberalism advocated by most of the countries of 'new Europe'... Nonetheless, his successor will have to work hard to maintain such a high profile on the world stage as he did." (12/03/2007)

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Corriere della Sera - Italy

Massimo Nava, the daily's Paris correspondent, notes that Jacques Chirac has not officially declared his support of Nicolas Sarkozy, or nominated an heir. "There was a bit in Jacques Chirac's speech that many have taken for an approbation in favour of Sarkozy, when he mentioned the successful fight against criminality... . But Sarkozy has imposed himself as a man breaking away, applying a method, a system and a governmental mentality very often openly different from Chirac. He therefore could not have received a blessing from him. At the top of the polls, Sarkozy is doing a balancing act: on the one hand he is seeking to seduce far-right voters and on the other he wants to stand apart from Chirac by promising economical reforms and the modernisation of the country to the middle classes". (12/03/2007)

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