October 23, 2002	Wednesday	Sha’aban 16,1423

PARIS: France’s blunt and unrepentant refusal to play by the EU economic rulebook has outraged its partners in Brussels and fuelled alarm among French europhiles at the country’s isolation in Europe.

Since his election in May, Jacques Chirac has proclaimed his determination to work with Germany to make a success of the two major challenges facing the union: enlargement and the reform of its institutions.

But on nearly every core project his words have been accompanied by an obstructiveness and insistence on the primacy of domestic interests that have rarely been seen since the days of Charles de Gaulle.

France’s willingness earlier this month to flout Europe’s stability and growth pact is the most spectacular evidence yet of what Le Monde, in a recent editorial, called “French national selfishness”.

Designed to stabilise the euro, the pact demanded that countries’ budgets should be in surplus or close to balance by 2004. Amid mounting evidence that they would be unable to meet that target, France, Germany and Italy were earlier this year given a later deadline of 2006.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service