On the face of it, French opposition to a two-week-old agreement between Washington and the European Community on cutting subsidies for farm exports was absurd. As the world’s fourth largest industrial exporter, France stands to gain far more than it will lose from the worldwide trade agreement that the U.S.-European subsidies agreement will facilitate. Farmers make up less than 6 percent of the total work force. But where farming is the issue, France is rarely rational. A romantic reverence for the independent peasant and the idyllic life of the French countryside has suffused the nation’s culture for centuries. Indeed, the more French families flee the stifling boredom of farm life, the more they venerate the myth of a rural paradise lost.
A strong, popular government might be able to stand up against this rustic nonsense. But after a decade in power, President Francois Mitterrand and his Socialist cabinet have worn out their welcome with the electorate. The Socialists are widely tipped to lose badly in national elections next March. If they were to abandon the farmers now, the small Communist Party would join an unnatural coalition with the conservatives and oust them tomorrow. Mitterrand sees himself as a pioneer of a new, united Europe. Yet if he does finally carry through with the threat to veto the U.S.-EC deal on subsidies, he will be seen as an opponent of Euro-unity.
As a result, the government’s apparent enthusiasm for the farmers’ cause may amount to less than meets the eye. As last week wore on, official spokesmen backed and filled. Beregovoy pledged to oppose the subsidies deal “at every step.” But other ministers said that France could not legally oppose that accord. Rather, Paris would veto any world-trade agreement under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which included the same subsidy-cutting provisions. If that is the case, Mitterrand will have a little more time to maneuver.
Even so, Mitterrand has painted himself into a corner. Every other major trading country favors both the recent transatlantic agreement and the wider GATT accord expected to grow out of it. (Belgium, where farmers blocked the roads to France last weekend could be an exception.) A GATT agreement would vastly increase the percentage of world trade governed by liberal free-trading rules-adding not only agriculture but services like banking, high technology, intellectual property and textiles. It would, according to most estimates, add $200 billion a year to the world’s wealth.
Of even more immediate importance to the French is the fact that the campaign for European unity is flagging badly. The European Community’s Maastricht Treaty on economic and political union has been rejected by Denmark and is in trouble in Britain. The EC’s system of fixed currency rates is in tatters. Recession threatens the entire region. Germany, the EC’s largest and richest country, is racked with economic woes. Racism has surfaced violently in Germany and elsewhere. So if Mitterrand winds up in an open confrontation with his partners, and particularly with his old friend German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the result could be the end of serious efforts to forge a united Europe in this century. In the end, he will probably come down on the side of Europe. But that is not certain. The myth of the happy paysan dies hard.
