Jacques Chirac related content 

France's finance minister has a domestic role in a global crisis. It is not in the least to François Baroin's discredit that, in the middle of the most severe...

Repentance is not a misplaced and excessive form of sensitivity. National repentance is in the news again, as it has been with remarkable frequency in recent years. In 2008,...

The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 in the United States did lasting damage to the European Union. In the initial aftermath of the attacks, the European Union...

Should ‘solidarity' have a role in the EU's future? The Finnish election suggests a debate and a definition of solidarity are needed. The astonishing success of the True...

In Qaddafi, a nation with a seeming propensity to intervene – the French – has found the ideal villain. In 2003, France, under President Jacques Chirac, took the lead in...

It is hardly surprising that the EU institutions and press corps find it hard to take France's ministers for European affairs seriously. Less than four years into his term,...

Germans hold the most important jobs; Commission to report on mix of nationalities. The creation of the European External Action Service set in train a series of changes...

The EU stands to benefit if the UK and France can make defence deal work. Necessity is the mother of invention. Faced with stark constraints on public spending, David...

Tony Blair devouts much more space in his prime ministerial memoir to New Labour, Northern Ireland, the 2012 Olympics, Iraq and terrorism than to the EU. We distil the EU...

French MEP is taking on the hedge funds. If the EU succeeds in adopting a law regulating hedge funds, it will owe a lot to one man: Jean-Paul Gauzès, a French...

The ‘hissing cousins' – Europe and the US – find an admirably lucid and fair referee for their sparring. The blow-back of disappointment when US President Barack Obama...

Poul Skytte Christoffersen to help Catherine Ashton setting up new foreign policy service. The decision by Catherine Ashton to appoint Poul Skytte Christoffersen to her...

Clumsy Russian tactics are boosting NATO in eastern Europe, and making the Kremlin look weak. In the 1990s, when enlarging NATO to take in the ex-communist countries still...

French president's no-show at the European Council. One of the minor symptoms of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's “rupture” with what went before (ie, the...

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, has Europe entered a post-post-1989 period? “I smell an overall collapse,” Nikolai Ryzhkov, the Soviet prime minister,...

A long and distinguished history of botching important appointments. The European Council has a long and distinguished history in botching appointments to the European...

France's Europe minister is a combative Atlanticist and long-time loyalist of Nicolas Sarkozy. For France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, there are three types of appointment....

France's Europe minister rebuilds relations. If Bruno Le Maire did not exist, French President Nicolas Sarkozy would have had to invent him. But there was no need. As a...

The Chinese premier's tour of Europe marks an upgrading of relations with the European Commission and even hints at early hope for its most troubled relationship, with...

France's permanent representative to the EU for the past seven years should be looking for a job. Now that France's presidency of the EU is out of the way, Pierre Sellal,...