FROM COLD WAR TO SANGFROID

Diane Geddes reports on

French attitudes to the prospect of German reunification

Paris 1 LOVE Germany so much that I'm glad there are two of them,' Francois Mauriac, the French novelist, once said, adding that the day East and West Germany reunited 'we shall have reason to tremble'.

But that much-quoted comment was made way back in the 1950s, and much has happened since then to bring France and West Germany closer together and to obliterate the old fears. Indeed, recent polls (taken before the latest develop- ments, in East Germany) show that the French now consider West Germany to be their 'best friend and surest ally'.

However, the crumbling of the Berlin Wall has revived the spectre of a united all-powerful Germany which, let it not be forgotten, invaded France three times in the space of a century. 'Of course, I'm delighted by what's going on,' a Parisian friend said, 'but I also feel a certain apprehension. I know it's irrational, but it's there. I cannot forget the war.'

Behind the universal and genuine French joy in the East Germans' new- found freedoms, the concern shows through. France stands to be more im- mediately and fundamentally affected, than any other country by developments in the two Germanies.

West Germany is far and away France's most important political and economic partner. Some 40 per cent of France's trade is with West Germany. The carefully fos- tered Paris-Bonn axis has been the driving force behind the construction of Europe for the past three decades. And, militarily, West Germany has served as a very useful buffer between France and the Eastern bloc.

All that is now to be called into question, or so the French are being told. Most commentators seem to take it as a fait accompli that reunification will now take place, though when and in what form they do not explain.

Max Clos, political columnist in the Figaro, was one of the first publicly to voice his worries. While everyone else was still full of the euphoria surrounding the first opening up of the Berlin Wall, he was already writing about the inherent dangers of a unified German state of 80 million inhabitants, with their known capacities for 'hard work, discipline and organisation'.

'Everyone has accepted the formula of the "common European home" invented by Gorbachev,' he wrote. 'The question is who is to be the architect and who the best-housed tenant? The French dream of an outward-looking Europe whose centre of gravity would naturally be Paris. The Germans see things differently; their desire is for the continent of "Mitteleuropa", whose centre has historically always been Berlin.'

A week before the opening of the Berlin Wall, the hitherto taboo subject of Ger- man reunification was broached during a press conference with Chancellor Kohl and President Mitterrand at the end of a two-day Franco-German summit in Rome. 'Listen carefully to what the President has to say,' said Kohl, smiling, but visibly tense. 'It's very important.'

Mitterrand went on to explain that 'reunification should not be a subject for

fear or approval. What counts is what the German people themselves want and can do. . . I am not afraid of reunification. History advances, and I take it as it is. 1 believe that the German wish for reunifica- tion is legitimate. If they want it and can do it, then France will adapt its policies so as to act in the best interests of Europe and itself.' Mitterrand added that he would be 'very surprised if we did not have a new European structure within the next ten years'.

Mitterrand's reaction to the latest de- velopments in East Germany has been equally calm and pragmatic. Repeating that it was not for France to express any reservations about an eventual German reunification (what good would that do, when France could do nothing to prevent it, even if it wanted to?), he re-emphasised his view that the best way of dealing with such an eventuality would be to `go further and quicker' with the construction of a united Europe.

This will doubtless be the theme of the mini-summit of the 12 EEC leaders which he has called, in his capacity as the present EEC president, in Paris on Saturday. Mitterrand sees Europe as emerging from the familiar East-West order, established at Yalta, into a better, but more uncertain and more difficult period. 'We had got used to a certain order, even if we didn't particularly like it. We must now invent a new phase in the history of Europe.' Mitterrand loves making history.

The President's idea of ensuring that East Germany is sucked into a strong Western European community in order to avoid West Germany turning eastwards seems to be shared by the leaders of the other main French parties. The former president, Giscard d'Estaing, now leader of the centre-right UDF party, saw this as a possible means of avoiding the destabilis- ing effect of a full reunification.

'It must be a federal Europe and not a federal Germany which is able to welcome the participation of the East Germans when the time comes,' he said, adding that if a single united German state were formed, 'the consequences for Europe will be considerable. It would be quite a different Europe from that we know to- day.'

Jacques Chirac, the RPR leader, appears less worried by the prospect of a united Germany, or at least appeared so before this became such an immediate possibility. Speaking the day before the opening up of the Berlin Wall, he magnani- mously said that 'France must be une- quivocally for the reunification of the German nation if this is wished by the Germans themselves. We cannot be Euro- peans if we think we can build Europe with only a part of Germany, or partisans of the Franco-German entente if this must for ever exclude the other part of the German people.'

Interestingly, his view — which is not that of most of the French commentators — seems to be shared by a majority of the French people, if opinion polls are any- thing to go by. A poll taken immediately after the collapse of the Berlin Wall (when the euphoria was still on) showed that 62' per cent of the French believed that the two Germanies would soon reunite, and 60 per cent thought this would be a good thing for France, while nearly three-quarters thought it would pose no problem for the construction of (Western) Europe. I won- der whether their reply would be the same in a few weeks' time.