The Sunday (London) Times has a longish article with a British take on the EU summit dust up, and a look forward at what comes next.
Although President Jacques Chirac appears to have spectacularly sabotaged the British presidency by pushing EU leaders into open warfare at their summit in Brussels, Downing Street officials say that Blair will unrepentantly continue to argue for a “new Europe”.
“Blair will use the presidency to push forward his view that Europe in the future should be looking to put money into technology, research and development and developing skills rather than sinking it all in agricultural subsidies,” said a senior Downing Street source.
His reception is likely to be mixed, however. Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, the current EU president, said he would not listen to Blair’s speech as Thursday “is the national day of Luxembourg”. Nor would he give Blair any advice on how to handle the presidency “as clearly my advice is not appreciated”.
Juncker is seen by British diplomats as the pawn who did Chirac’s bidding at the Brussels summit on Friday in a series of “brown envelope” offers to poorer EU members in a manoeuvre to isolate Britain over its £3 billion annual budget rebate...
A senior French diplomat said that Chirac knew from the beginning of the summit that there would be no agreement on the budget and that domestic French politics had led him to pick a fight with Blair over the British rebate.
Lest you think Chirac the winner in all of this:
The French president’s success in isolating Britain to divert attention from his own political problems won him no immediate plaudits at home, however. French commentators were still concentrating on Blair’s success on Thursday in getting the Brussels summit to put the proposed EU constitution — rejected by French and Dutch voters — on the back burner for a “period of reflection”. One newspaper even crowned Blair “Tony the First, emperor of Europe ”.
The article includes a blow-by-blow account of the summit punches and counter-punches, but I like this breakdown of the various camps within the European Union:
Blairite model
The British view is that the EU must liberalise to thrive in a globalised world. It envisages a political EU but one that looks outward, rather than towards ever closer integration
Franco-German model
This is the traditionalist community built in the 1950s. Although it has embraced enlargement so far it is wary of more members, particularly Turkey. It wants to protect social welfare and agricultural subsidies and to promote political union
Missionary model
The commitment to social welfare would continue but at the same time the union would expand to embrace the rest of eastern Europe and Turkey
Exploding model
This marries Anglo-Saxon liberalism with new members. They might include Turkey and even Russia. But the union would be more of a free trade area than a political entity.
If you are in the feel-bad mood, there is this:
BLAIR ON CHIRAC:
I'm not prepared to have someone tell me there is only one view of what Europe is ... Europe isn't owned by any of them; Europe is owned by all of usCHIRAC ON BLAIR:
He wanted to safeguard his entire rebate and that led other countries to overplay their hand ... to the detriment of Europe ... that is a bad result for EuropeSCHRÖ,öDER ON BLAIR:
We are in one of the worst political crises Europe has ever seen ... We could not get agreement because of the stubbornness of Great Britain and Holland