France’s stated ambition for its presidency of the European Union (FPEU)⁽¹⁾ is to create ‘a Union which acts to meet today’s challenges’. Featured among the four priorities of the action programme for the next six months is a relaunch of European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). The central direction of the French presidency in the area of defence will be the strengthening of the military capabilities available in Europe. While the three other principal subjects of the French presidency—immigration, the energy/climate agreement and the common agricultural policy—cohere with previous presidencies and are therefore the objects of a European consensus as agenda items, the question of ESDP is the only initiative which is purely French. It springs directly from France’s desire to make the EU a leading world actor. In order to put the finishing touches to the ESDP issue successfully, France will need the full support of its partners, who will have to adopt this French priority. However, the United Kingdom, France’s favoured partner since the 1998 St-Malo summit, is not available owing to Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s lack of enthusiasm for the ESDP, as well as the paralysis resulting from the Irish referendum. It is for this reason that following the Irish ‘no’ to the Lisbon treaty, Nicolas Sarkozy turned to Germany for support for his strategy to manage the politico-institutional crisis, which consisted of pushing for completion of all the national ratifications. This strategy has the simultaneous advantages of being the only credible one, in the absence of arrangements enabling the non-ratification by one of the 27 to be finessed,

and of constituting the scenario which best preserves France’s room for manoeuvre to pursue the priorities of its presidency of the European Council. But Germany’s support in the ESDP area is not guaranteed, even though the White Paper on defence and national security states: ‘Franco-German cooperation, which has played a historic part in European defence matters, will constitute one of the drivers of new initiatives’.⁽²⁾ For Berlin there are still too many uncertainties concerning this key issue for the FPEU: what does France see as the outcome of ESDP and how does it want to arrange EU-NATO relations in the context of the ESDP?

So, the French announcement of the revision of its policy towards NATO and its intention to reintegrate fully into the Atlantic organisation has not aroused the enthusiasm in Germany hoped for by the French authorities and does not appear to have offered, at least for the time being, the increased freedom of manoeuvre desired in the area of European defence. Even though a few months ago the Germans had high hopes for the FPEU, including for ESDP,⁽³⁾ lack of reaction to the White Paper indicates a certain ‘wait-and-see’ attitude on the part of the Germans.