The European Council on Foreign Relations

Did Merkel ever love Sarkozy? I don’t think so….

Date: 2nd May 2012 | Author: Ulrike Guérot,

The key debate among journalists these days is what will happen to ‘Merkozy’ if Hollande wins on Sunday - and most seem to agree that it would indeed be a drama for Europe. The Economist even thinks that Hollande would be dangerous for Europe.

I think the Economist got it wrong for the following reasons: Firstly, they tend to overlook how poor the reform balance of Nicholas Sarkozy actually is. Sarkozy wanted to shake things up in 2007 but ran out of steam after fiddling with the 35-hour work week and raising the minimum retirement age from 60 to 62. His most recent move has been to reduce labour costs by cutting social insurance charges on payrolls and raising value-added tax on goods and services instead, as Paul Taylor pointed out a couple days ago.

But did Sarkozy reform the French economy in a convincing way? No he didn’t - if he did there wouldn’t be so much talk about it

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EU-Ukraine: from fatigue to irritation

Date: 2nd May 2012 | Author: Nicu Popescu,

Categories: Wider Europe,

Ukraine’s favourite foreign policy game is called ‘multi-vectorness’ – a constant process of ‘eschewing choice’ as this recent study explained. For years Ukraine sought to extract concessions and be treated nicely by both Russia and the EU or US - not because it was sticking to its promises, but because it played sometimes skilfully and sometimes brazenly on contradictions between external actors. A simplified version of the rules of the game, in its Ukrainian version, looks like this:

Promise both Russia and the EU everything they might want to hear (usually integration into some Russian- or EU-led initiative);
Ask for something in exchange (market access, lower gas prices, financial assistance, opportunities for lucrative but opaque deals etc).
Get what you asked and drag your feet on delivering on your promises.
If either the EU or Russia is upset for

The Dutch in a twist

Date: 25th April 2012 | Author: Dick Oosting,

Categories: Euro Crisis, Reinventing Europe,

The precarious coalition that Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte (VVD, conservative/liberal) had cobbled together 18 months ago (with the Christian Democrats (CDA) and with the support of Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV)) collapsed on Saturday. The makeshift construction by which the PVV did not participate in government but ‘condoned’ it had been hanging by a thread already because they recently lost their minimal formal majority after the defection of one of Wilders’ lieutenants.

The bust-up came over cuts required to meet the 3% limit for the 2013 budget. With the deficit running at 4.8% some €14b had to be found, and the three party leaders had been negotiating for seven weeks in secret. Just as Rutte thought they were there – having found over €14b in all manner of measures to which Wilders had agreed individually – Wilders pulled the plug on the package, saying that he would

ECFR this week: 20th April 2012

Date: 20th April 2012 | Author: Nicholas Walton,

Categories: ECFR this week ,

We are keeping a close eye on France over the coming weekend, as that country votes in the first round of its presidential election. Ulrike Guerot has previewed the election from a German point of view in this blog post – ‘Should Merkel be scared of Hollande’ – asking whether German unease over a socialist victory is justified. In this article Thomas Klau argues that France deserves better than the campaign it has been given.

We’ll have more on the election as events unfold – and it sounds as though Thomas has already been kept very busy giving analysis to the French and European media.

Meanwhile, several other things have been keeping us busy:

Our Madrid office recorded this Spanish language podcast with Ana Palacio, covering everything from the World Bank to the euro crisis and the performance of Mariano Rajoy.

Sebastian Dullien wrote his latest € View blog post

Should Merkel be scared of Hollande?

Date: 19th April 2012 | Author: Ulrike Guérot,

Categories: Germany in Europe,

Looking at some of the most radical notions in some speeches of François Hollande, who is now actively fishing in the basin of the French left, one could have a clear flash of ‘déjà-vu’, as it resembles pretty much François Mitterrands ideas back in 1981. Six weeks of vacation and retirement at 60 were already in vogue back then.

The nervousness seems to grow in Berlin because the French elections and their likely outcome – a French president called Hollande – would heavily impact German plans with respect to the next steps in the euro-crisis management, especially the vote and implementation of the fiscal compact and the ESM. The possibility of Sarkozy u-turning the devastating trend that has been unfolding against him in recent days is highly unlikely. Hence, Berlin is busy preparing a combined vote of the fiscal compact and the ESM in the Bundestag by the end of May. The aim is

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