Article source: “Hollande, novice en diplomatie mais résolu à affirmer ses différences”, Philippe RATER and Catherine RAMA, AFP. Published in Le Point (12/02/2012)
François Hollande may be a novice when it comes to diplomacy but he means to emphasise the differences between his policies and those of Nicolas Sarkozy, as he has already done concerning Afghanistan and the new European treaty.
Yet his trenchant positions have set him on a path with an uncertain outcome considering their possible effects on France’s relations with its allies.
If he is elected, Hollande’s first foreign trips will enable him to signal these changes, whilst maintaining the key alliances with Germany and the other Western allies.
François Hollande has announced that he intends to pay his first presidential visit to Berlin, presumably on May 19th, before going on to Chicago to attend the G8, and then to a NATO summit (May 20th-21st).
In Germany, he wants to persuade Merkel to renegotiate the European treaty on budgetary discipline to include measures for economic growth and employment, something which has not gone down well with the German Chancellor who does not appreciate the treaty being called into question in this way.
In Chicago, he will explain why he is in favour of withdrawing French combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2012 – Sarkozy having only planned to do so a year later.
“For François Hollande, the Franco-German relationship is a primary concern, it is essential and decisive. Which is why his first presidential visit will be to meet Angela Merkel in Berlin to consider reorienting the construction of the European Union,” Hollande’s campaign manager, Pierre Moscovici, explains to the AFP.
But, he suggests, “we also need to forge strong relations with other partners. That way, it will be possible to maintain trusting relations with Italy in a Euope which would not be limited to a conservative alliance.”
Hollande has already been to Germany to attend the Social Democratic Party’s annual conference. According to his entourage, he has let Angela Merkel know that he would be happy to organise a meeting with her in the run up to the presidential elections – “without actually asking for one” – but the Chancellor has not yet responded, and has reaffirmed her support for Sarkozy’s candidacy in even stronger terms.
Sticking to the theme of diplomacy, apart from three visits within France between March 10th and March 20th, Hollande says he has planned “few trips,” as he considers that the campaign “will play out essentially in France.” Yet, according to Moscovici, “he will still go to Denmark (currently holding the EU presidency), Great Britain, Poland and Morocco after visiting Brussels, Germany, Italy and Spain.”
London is scheduled for the end of February for a discussion with Prime Minister, David Cameron, Copenhagen for the beginning of March and then Warsaw for the end of March and Rabat in early April.
The socialist candidate wishes to boost common European defence policy and to break away from Sarkozy’s “scapegoat” policy with regard to Turkey, which has a “strategic role” and whose entry application to the EU “must be treated fairly but without forgetting that it is a 10-year-old issue and a delicate one for public opinion,” Moscovici adds.
“Iran is a very complex issue” but “we need to push the combination of sanctions and dialogue as far as possible to get things moving,” he goes on.
Though little is likely to set Hollande apart from Sarkozy in terms of relations with the US, the Middle East and the Islamic regimes born out of the “Arab spring”, the socialist candidate is determined to highlight his differences on Africa and emerging countries with which there are “foundations to be rebuilt.”
On the African continent, Moscovici suggests, France needs to “abandon its ‘turf’ and put an end to la Françafrique,” a term which describes the confused relationship, mixing diplomacy and business, between France and its former colonies.
Translation: Noémie Leroy and Fleur Houzé
Editing: Sam Trainor