France and The European Union Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

France and The European Union - Essay Example French used twentieth-century phenomenon, in which it claims to be a monopoly of political, intellectual and moral leadership of European integration. In fact, by the 21st century political leadership of France seemed to be short in supply of European question, in difference with the demands from various sources - not necessarily aggregated or organized demands - for more, different Europe. The political system that France used to helped bring into being, the European Union poses challenges of many orders to all its member states; it is more than the sum of its parts. Where as France is concerned membership of the EU derives from a strong and invasive sense of imperative, or lack of alternative, that dates back to the Fourth Republic (1946-1958) and the foundations of what we know today as the EU. In fact, Parsons has demonstrated that in those years, the 'community' option for building Europe was not the only possible means of reaching France's primary foreign policy objective -national security via reconciliation with Germany - than more 'traditional' methods of European cooperation; but it had the most supporters, fewest opponents, and the best luck. Once France had embarked upon European community-building, the leaders of the Fifth Republic, de Gaulle included, turned France's European commitment into a virtue and a vehicle for its additional foreign policy objecti ves of rank and greatness, via defiant shows of national sovereignty and independence, and a constant balancing act between integration and autonomy; although De Gaulle, it must be said, set European integration on a new course: the sovereignty of the states and the Inter-governmental nature of the institutions was to be emphasized. French Relationship with European Union For many years it was more accurate to describe French relations with the European Union as a division of French foreign policy, this remains true to an imperative extent. In other terms, the French foundation for tying itself to the 1950s experiment in institution-building was borrowed from the vocabulary of international power relations, la construction European providing first and foremost a buffer between France and potential international aggression played out on its territory. Over time, the consequences of the commitment to ever closer union had the effect of creating its own domestic rationale. From de Gaulle to Chirac, via, crucially, Franois Mitterrand, Europe has taken on its own momentum, in the guise of processes of 'Europeanization', as an opportunity for domestic reform and a crutch for apparently ailing traditional ideologies (socialism, communism) - but against a backdrop where 'Europe' continues to have low salience in the French electorate. Since the early 1950s, France has embarked on a process of Europeanization, thereby accepting the unacceptable: the primacy of EU law, the entanglement of European and French organizational structures, and a new and reduced France as part of some larger entity. However, anti-international anarchy explanation for building Europe still holds for French decision-makers today, usually caricatured in the expression Europe puissance. France would cooperate with its European neighbours as a means of imposing French designs on the Cold War order, and of imparting a sense of national identity to the French. Though to a extensive