Today's Date:

I am truly delighted to be back in Miami for probably the fifth or sixth time in less than two years. Last time, few weeks ago only, it was to launch the Florida France Foundation for the Arts, and it was an amazing success. I am truly delighted to be at the Biltmore, at the invitation of the Beacon Council and the French American Chamber of commerce in Miami. And I would like to recognize the presence of, and thank for their presence Senator Gwen Margolis and Representative Robertson, thank you very much both of you for your presence today.

I was supposed to speak about the French-American relations but given the new developments in Europe, I will try to address at the same time the improvement of the French-American relations and the new developments in Europe in twenty minutes and then I will do my best to answer your questions on both issues.

On the French-American relations, let’s be candid. For two years, I have been confronted with a kind of French paradox. You mentioned that I presented my credentials to President Bush on the 9th of December 2002, and on that day, he told me that he considered France the best ally of the United States of America. And of course, he was right. We were the first to express our solidarity to America after 9/11. I was at the time the French ambassador to the UN, I saw the destruction of the twin towers from the windows of my office and Jacques Chirac came to Washington on the 18th of September. He was the first Head of state to come to express not only our solidarity but our determination to work hand in hand with the USA to destroy the terrorist networks, and we participated in the war in Afghanistan right from the beginning, and we still have troops deployed in Afghanistan, special forces fighting with yours on the border with Pakistan to try to get Ben Laden and his aids. So yes, we are fully on board in the war against terror. Our armies are not only side by side in Afghanistan, they are side by side in Kosovo, they are side by side in Africa and you remember exactly one year ago together US troops and French troops were sent to Haiti to try to prevent what could evolve into a civil war. Few days ago I was in Norfolk where the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle was side by side with the aircraft carrier Eisenhower for joint maneuvers for training at defence. All this show that yes, we are true friends and allies.

But at the same time, for two years we have been confronted with the worst crisis in decades and of course the reason why is the war in Iraq. I will not spend time on this because this is past. And the question today is how come suddenly what was such a stormy weather has evolved into sweetening in our relations. And it’s an important question because after all, when president Bush was re-elected, he decided to maintain the foreign policy of America unchanged and in Paris as well as in Berlin, our two leaders J. Chirac and G. Shroeder, have not changed the foreign policy of France or Germany. How come with the same substance in the foreign policy of the USA, France, Germany we have suddenly a kind of new situation, our relationship is back on track ? I would like to offer two explanations.

The first one is that if the substance has not changed, certainly the style has changed, and in foreign policy, style is very important. The style has changed with the visit of Condi Rice. The moment she was official as Secretary of State, she decided to spend one week in Europe, two days in Paris, and her visit was a perfect moment in our relation. At the end of her visit, I told her “Condi you did a homerun!» It was perfect, she changed the mood of the French people, of the French media, about our relations and it prepared well upon for the visit of President Bush to Europe. I attended the dinner between President Bush and President Chirac, it was certainly their best meeting ever, and together they decided to let the historians decide who was right and who was wrong about the war in Iraq, and to turn this bitter page once and for all, and together to help the Lebanese people, to help the peace process in the Middle east, to help the Iraqi assembly and so on and so forth.

And that’s exactly the second reason why our relation has evolved because beyond style we have benefited from changed circumstances. The first new development has been of course the successful election in Iraq of a new assembly at the end of January because it helped to turn a bitter page. It was easy after the election to say “ok”, now we have one common goal to help this new assembly, the new government of Iraq to succeed because it is in our common interest, because if we don’t succeed together, then it will be a disaster for the Iraqi people, for the Middle East as a whole and for the relations between the Muslim world and the West. That is what is at stake today in Iraq. So we will work together in Iraq.

Second, the Middle East peace process: it is for all of us in Europe the number one preoccupation, the number one priority. And during four years we were expressing to Washington our frustration: how come the USA, which was so engaged during the days of Clinton, suddenly was in a situation of relative disengagement. The answers were always the same from Washington : as long as Yasser Arafat is there, there is nothing we can do. He is a kind of stumbling block on the road to peace. As you know, with the death of president Arafat, we had democratic elections of the new president of the Palestinian authority and it helped to bring together the Europeans and the Americans with one goal : to help the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government to succeed with the withdrawal of the Israeli settlers from Gaza and with the implementation of the road map.

And last changed circumstance, Lebanon : the assassination of Rafic Hariri, triggered a huge wave of emotion throughout Lebanon and our common goal, the USA and France was very simple: as in Ukraine, it was to help the will of the people to prevail, to help Lebanese people to get rid of the Syrian troops after 29 years of presence and occupation and to help the Lebanese people to organize free and fair elections. And mission accomplished! The Syrian troops have been withdrawn from Lebanon. The elections started last Sunday and they will continue in the next few weeks. So you see, not only our relations are back on track, but when we work together as we do in Lebanon, in the Middle East, in Iran, on Iran, there are positive results and that’s my message today because it shows that yes our friendship is back, it is a treasure, this friendship was born on the battlefield of Yorktown, you saved us twice last century, this is what is important, this is what we should always remember and, believe me, in France we remember that if we are a free country it is thanks to the sacrifices of so many American heroes who landed on Omaha Beach, and on the beaches in Normandy exactly 61 years ago.

Now, Europe, what is happening in Europe? Well I will try to address four questions to set the stage for the dialogue that we will have.

The first question is why have we embarked fifty years ago in the great ambition of the European Union? And I think it is a good starting point because I read time and again in American media that J. Chirac and G. Shroeder want to build Europe as a kind of counterweight to American dominance. This is not what we want to do. We have started the European Union simply to make war impossible in Europe. That is our goal and you must understand that we are now experiencing the longest period of peace in European history since the days of the Roman Empire; so it was a huge ambition to make war impossible in Europe. And it has been a huge success. We started by pulling together our coal and steel industries because guns are made of coal and steel. Then we continued with a common market, and it was a great success. Having a common market we discovered that we needed a common currency, the euro. Not to compete with the dollar, but simply when you have a common market, you need a common currency. Just consider the situation in the USA if you have one currency for Florida and Texas, one for California, one for the Great Lakes and one for the East coast, it would not work. And for us in Europe it was worse because we had one currency for each country. Now we have the euro for 12 countries, we have the euro in the pockets of 300 million Europeans. It is a great success story but don’t forget that when we had a referendum for the euro in France it was adopted by a rather thin majority of 51 against 49. Because after all, it was a jump, we knew what we had for 800 years, we had le Franc, our currency, and we didn’t know what would happen with the euro. Now we know that it is a great success. But at the time it was a risky move and in parallel the European Union was constantly extending. We were 6 founding countries, then we expanded from 6 to 9, 10, 12, and 15 and one year ago, in one big jump, we expanded from 15 to 25. With the addition of countries that, for most of them almost 15 years ago were on the other side of the iron curtain: Poland, the Check Republic, Hungary and so on and so forth. And three of our new partners were only 15 years ago part of the soviet empire, the three Baltic States. So for us it is a kind of miracle but it is a huge jump, a great and ambitious move, and now we are a European Union of 450 million citizens and we represent 30% of the world GDP, exactly the same as the American economic weight. It’s a great achievement, and so now why the constitution?

That’s the second important question. Why a constitution? Well we were not when we prepared this constitution where you were in Philadelphia in 1787. You started from scratch with one great ambition, to create a new country. Europe is not a new country, it is the addition of 25 very old countries, with 21 different languages, different traditions, legal traditions, constitutional traditions, different histories, with more periods of wars as I said than periods of peace and from all these differences we had to move together even closer. So far we had done that by different treaties, from the Rome treaty adopted in 1958 to the Nice treaty adopted only three years ago. But the layers of these treaties were this thick and it was very difficult to understand how it was working and we needed simplifications in the European structures and clarifications and improvements. That’s the purpose of the constitution.

Now why a French “No”? First you have to understand that we have had for months a big debate, a very democratic debate. We had what we call a referendum. We have chosen as we did in the past on important occasions not to ratify the constitution in the form of a treaty through the Parliament but to give the possibility for each French citizen to cast his or her vote. And for weeks, the French were passionate about this debate. And of course when you ask the question to the French, they will give you ten answers. That’s part of the problem: they will tell you what they think about the President, the government, the economic situation, the social problems, and the weather, whatever… And so it is always a risky move. But at the same time we needed a really democratic debate about the European Union. We had a referendum on the Maastricht treaty, that is the euro; it was only natural for us to have another referendum on the constitution.

Now you have to understand that –and here I express my personal interpretation of what happened- there are many French here, French citizens here, may be they will have their own view of the situation, but I do think that 80 % of the French remain totally in favour of the European Union. And I say that because if we had chosen the ratification process of the constitution through the parliament you would have a majority of 80% in the parliament. The government parties, that is right and centre, and the socialist party and the greens were in favour of the ratification. And only the extremes, that is the extreme right and the extreme left, communist and trotskists, were against the constitution. Nonetheless we have 55 % of the French voting no. How come? Well, beyond what they think about the president, the government, the weather and the economy, basically the problem of the European Union is that it seems not to be protective enough. That’s the reason of the “no”. In the USA, you have a big debate about globalisation, about outsourcing, about the rise of China and India, the transfer of jobs, blue and white collars now. Well we have exactly the same debate in France. And it is not only globalisation and so on but it is also in part the enlargement because now we have got cartoons representing a Polish plumber taking the job of a French plumber, so outsourcing is not only China and India, it is also inside Europe and the French are very much attached to what they call their social model, we know that we have to adapt to the new circumstances but at the same time we are very conservative. We would like to keep what we have and to be successful in a globalized world. The government adopted a number of reforms in the past 2/3 years. We have adopted a reform of the pension system, done, of the health system, done, more flexibility for the workforce, the 35 hours week, done, and all this created the feeling that it was going too fast too far and another big question for a number of French was “where are the borders of Europe?”, because expanding, expanding, expanding, we are 25 but we know that soon we will be joined by Rumania and Bulgaria, then we know that knocking at the door we have Turkey and may be Ukraine. Where are we? So all this anxiety took the form of 55% of the “no”.

Now last question, what will happen? Well first it is very important for the other countries to cast their votes, to ratify or decide not to ratify. We have expressed our views, but the Netherlands did the same, only last night, yesterday, with a “no” which was even stronger than the French no but you know that 9 countries before had expressed a “yes” so we are half way through the ratification process and we think it is very important to give the opportunity to the other countries to express their will. And then the leaders of Europe will meet when the time will come, that is at the end of this process, if that is their decision, and assess the situation and decide what to do. Now you have to understand that we are not in a situation of crisis, it was not a jump in an empty swimming pool. We simply stay where we are. We were hoping for another progress, the French said “no”, that ‘s their view, others said yes, that’s their view, but for the 450 million Europeans we stay where we are and the institutions stay and the euro stays and simply we were hoping for another breakthrough, well, not this time, not for the time being. The leaders will have to assess the situation in probably 18 months or two years. So these are the 4 answers that I wanted to present to all of you, they are my personal interpretations of the “no” of 55% of the French when they cast their votes. But we had a big debate, a democratic debate.

Just to conclude, and to help you understand that we are not building the United States of America, if you want to understand what is happening in Europe, you have to consider that you would create with the NAFTA countries, USA, Canada and Mexico, much more than NAFTA itself, if all the Americas had to vote to adopt the, let’s say, “amerigo” to replace the dollar as their currency, the currency of the USA, Canada and Mexico, would you vote “yes”? If you had to adopt a constitution, for Canada, the USA and Mexico, would you vote “yes”? These are the questions which were addressed in the last five years to the French people, we said yes to the euro, for the time being we have said no to the constitution, it is not the end of the great European ambition, it is a pause, the government of France will have to assess the situation and answer the anxieties, the preoccupations of the French people.

Thank you very much.

Questions

Excellent question, thank you very much. Is the French no bad news? That is a sovereign decision of the French people, you are a democracy, you don’t have the referendum, we have the referendum, and the privilege of the French citizens on that occasion, is that each one directly casts his or her vote and decides, so it is not good news or bad news, they have this privilege. Now, is there an impact of the position of France in the EU, and for the relations between the EU and France with the USA ? No, we will continue to participate in all the debates of the European Union, as always in a constructive way, each country is defending its interests and at the same time has a strong will to converge towards a solution for the European Union as such. The next debate will be about the budget, which is of course very important.

For the relations between the USA and Europe, the USA and France, nothing has changed. I spent my afternoon yesterday together with my successor at the Elysée, the diplomatic advisor of President Chirac, in Washington with Condi Rice and Stephan Hadley, the National Security Advisor of President Bush. We were together discussing the very issues that I mentioned, Lebanon, Syria, the Middle East peace process, Iran, Iraq and of course the Transatlantic relations. Nothing in our dialogue has changed. If I had to add one personal preoccupation, I would say that the risk of a new situation in Europe is that we will be a little inward looking, because we will be preoccupied by the new situation and we will spend a lot of time to address these problems at a time when America, with President Bush express strongly the support of the United States to a strong Europe and I do think that this hope expressed by the President of the USA is a very sincere one because we live in a dangerous world, we are confronted with the same threats of terrorism, the spread of arms of mass destruction, we have to work together, and that’s why you need a strong Europe. And the fact is that for the next months we will be very preoccupied by the new situation in Europe and may be we will have less time, energy to think about our contribution to the challenges of today’s world? But this is a question mark, and my hope is that no, we will address the problems inside, but continue to be outward looking as we were in the last years. Now last question, how come the French leaving in the USA voted by a strong majority, near 88 % in favour of the constitution? Well probably because when you live in the globalized world, you see may be in an easier way why it is so necessary to continue to build the European Union, to reinforce the EU so that we will compete and succeed in this globalized world and for that, when you live in the USA, its is obvious that you will succeed only if the European countries are strongly united to defend their interests together and to compete as we do with Airbus, with a giant of today Boeing, for the air industry, and so on and so forth. But when you live in France, you see that the situation is not so simple, that there is unemployment, and so on and so forth, and so your perspective is slightly different. So these are my personal remarks in trying to answer your questions. Thank you.

No, I don’t think so, for one good reason: we have rules, which have been accepted by the European Union, by the United States, by the whole world. They are inscribed in the charter of the world trade organization. And we have to respect these rules. There are treaties and we abide by the treaties. Simply we will continue to defend our interest as Europeans as you do as Americans. For instance, the US government has decided to ask for a panel to challenge the subsidies given to Airbus, immediately the European Union has decided to ask WTO to organize a panel to discuss the subsidies given to Boeing, and that’s life, and it is a perfect example of why we need a strong Europe because if we had not this capacity to negotiate as one if we were 25 countries, it would be less a powerful competitor and less successful in international negotiations. But nothing will change, we have treaties, there are laws, and we will implement them without a change.

No, we have a tradition. The question is about the subsidies given by the richest countries to the new countries, to help them to catch up. It is a tradition well established in Europe to help the new comers which usually have a lower GDP per capita to catch up through transfers and you have to understand that these transfers are huge in favour of the ten new countries which joined the European Union. Last year we had a transfer of roughly 40 billion dollars a year, which is huge and it is helping Poland, Malta, the Check Republic, Cyprus and so on to catch up with those who have the highest standard of living. This will continue without a change because also that’s the law, and all the members respect the law. I mentioned that we will have to discuss the future, and that is the next budget and we will discuss that well in advance, that is not for next year because there is a 5 years budget, so we have time to think about it and of course we will have a big debate but not only between the newcomers and the richest countries, but also about the British rebate or special treatment, they don’t pay what they should pay, and so on and so forth, but this is a tradition we have and the vote which just occurred on the constitution, will no change at all. When you have a budgetary debate in the congress it is long, it is painful and always successful because at the end of the day you need a budget. That’s exactly the same story for the European Union, we have months of debates, who will pay what, and so on and so forth, and at the end of the day, we have a budget because simply we need a budget.

What we have on a regular basis, on the basis of five years elections, it is the election of the European parliament that is in Strasbourg and this is a vote of each citizen of Europe, from the European Union, the 25 countries to elect one parliament, the European parliament, which has more and more powers. So that’s Europe as a vote and that’s the only occasion so far when we have elections “Europe-wide”. For the rest, it is on the national basis and each country chooses the procedure, which is the law of the country. Some countries have only one possibility through the parliament, some countries have a choice like France, between parliament and referendum for the ratification of any treaty, some countries have a mix, for instance Spain had a referendum but only an indicative referendum, and then ratification through the parliament in a way that is also the situation for the Netherlands. The referendum is not a legal obligation. The result is not legally binding the government but of course it is a result to take into account the results. So you see beyond the European parliament we will stay for the moment that is for the years to come where we are, with national votes, or procedures.

- Competition

It is very healthy to have such a good competition. That is exactly the rule of the capitalist system which is based on competition, and it is good to have two great aircrafts companies such as Boeing and Airbus, because otherwise it would be a disaster for the consumers for the frequent flyers because the prices of the planes would go up and so on and so forth. What is necessary in this globalized world with such a fierce competition is to have a set of rules accepted and respected by all the actors and that is exactly what is the role of the World Trade Organization, we have accepted the rules and when we have a dispute, we have a battle within the WTO who decides who is right and who is wrong.

Let me conclude because I think as you represent the business community here, it is very important for you to understand that when we speak of globalization, it means essentially transatlantic integration. What is amazing is the intensity of the cooperation between the European and American economies. In America and it’s true in Florida ¾ of the foreign direct investments in America are coming from Europe. And this represents four million American jobs. And France is one of the key actors of this extraordinary intertwining of our economies and of course it is true that the American economy invested heavily in Europe and so you can not separate America and Europe in economy, we are really intertwined. Let me give you to understand well what I mean, one example. We are very proud of the big Airbus the A380 and of course we are proud as Europeans but you have to understand that 42% of each of these Airbus are built in America, they are the elements built by 100 American companies in 40 states in this country and they are sent to Toulouse in France to be assembled with the 60 % built in Europe. And we are very proud to compete with Boeing but Boeing is also building now pieces of each Boeing in Europe and they are sent to Seattle. And that’s the globalized world in which we live; this is the transatlantic community in which we live. So I would like to conclude on this note because I think it is very important for all of us to remember that if we are the two pillars of world democracies, if our glue and goal is to see these values of liberty, of freedom, of democracy and market economy spread around the world, the glue between us is not only values, it is also interests, our economies are truly intertwined. Thank you very much; it was a privilege for me to be with you today.