At the end of 2014 President François Hollande's main advisor on Europe was “found another job” at the prime minister's official residence Matignon. However, it also emerged that this same advisor will remain as the president's official 'sherpa' for European Union summits in Brussels. This slightly ambiguous rearrangement of roles may seem just a passing anecdote from behind the scenes in the corridors of power. But in fact it speaks volumes about the way that Hollande continues to tinker and fiddle with European issues. “Since December there's been considerable wavering,” says one worried advisor. “We’ve lost coherence and intelligibility, the departments no longer understand who's making the decisions and there's been a return to squabbling between the ministries.”
Thus François Hollande, the man who three years ago as a presidential candidate promised to “reorientate” Europe, is still looking for the right structural set-up to stop the erosion of French influence in Brussels. At a time when the victory of Syriza in Greece has changed the situation in Europe and the new Greek premier Alex Tsipras is looking for allies, these continual hesitations could turn out to have heavy consequences for French influence across Europe itself.
The civil servant at the centre of these musical chairs is Philippe Léglise-Costa, a figure who is unknown to the general public. In 2012 this 48-year-old 'technocrat', who was already very much in favour in the time of Nicolas Sarkozy, had become the key French figure in Brussels. His recent departure from the Elysée was made official on December 19th, 2014, at the same time as Sylvie Hubac left as the head of the president’s private office. However, the Elysée insists that his departure should in no way be seen as a punishment. It was, say officials, simply a “reorganisation in the monitoring of European affairs with the aim of reinforcing coherence” of action. “The idea is to reinforce the general secretariat [editor's note, at the prime minister's official residence, Matignon] and to concentrate resources for greater speed and operational efficiency,” says an official in Hollande's entourage, in full jargon mode.
As a result of Léglise-Costa's move to Matignon the economic advisor at the Elysée, Laurence Boone, will now get a wider brief. The woman who quit her job at the Bank of America to replace Emmanuel Macron in the spring of 2014 when the latter became minister for the economy, will in effect become the real 'sherpa' for the president at big gatherings in Brussels. Meanwhile diplomatic advisor Jacques Audibert will take over the European diplomatic brief. “The Booth-Audibert duo has always worked on European issues and Léglise-Costa is not disappearing from the landscape. There is in fact strong continuity, all one is doing is clarifying a little better who does what,” says one French diplomat, playing down the changes.
Other officials, however, are worried. Though he's been shunted to Matignon, Léglise-Costa is in fact staying on as head of the Secrétariat Général des Affaires Européennes (SGAE). This body, which has a staff of 220, is as crucial as it is unknown, its role being to ensure that government ministries and public policies are all singing from the same hymn sheet when it comes to Europe. However, for the first time the director of the SGAE is now not based inside the private office of either the prime minister or the head of state, which will reduce its political impact. Nonetheless Philippe Léglise-Costa has apparently been able to ensure that prime minister Manuel Valls' new advisor on Europe will be one of his former colleagues: diplomat Emmanuel Puisais-Jauvin, who was an advisor to former European affairs minister Catherine Colonna under President Jacques Chirac.
The handling of European affairs between the Elysée and Matignon has now become “multipolar, at the price of considerably weakening coordination and global vision” says one irritated specialist on European issues. “In terms of organisation, it's wobbly,” adds an advisor. “Given that the president of the Republic is already not exactly daring on the European scene, these weaknesses in the system won't encourage boldness.”
That argument is given greater force by the fact that this new and very fluid structure has been created less than a year after the previous shake-up. In April 2014, just after Manuel Valls became prime minister, the SGAE, which historically was always based at Matignon, was placed under the control of Léglise-Costa and thus the Elysée. At the time the Elysée justified this reorganisation by stating that it would allow the “decision-making process to be quicker”. François Hollande's team used words such as “strengthening” and “coherence”. Those are the same arguments that are now being used to justify the SGAE's move in precisely the opposite direction.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
“It had become too much for a single person, which made it necessary [for me] to be relieved of functions in the [presidential] office at the Elysée,” Philippe Léglise-Costa told Mediapart. In reality it was more than anything Manuel Valls, angry at not having a voice at the table on European policy, who asked for the SGAE to be returned under Matignon's wing.
There was also a personal element to the decision. Léglise-Costa, a graduate of the prestigious École Polytechnique and a career diplomat, was not universally popular at the Elysée. His critics describe him as solitary, even “highly-strung and emotional”. His rivalry with Emmanuel Macron, a graduate of the even more prestigious École Nationale d'Administration (ENA) and who was then deputy chief of staff at the Elysée, was a feature of the first few months of Hollande's term of office. Things did not improve when Macron was appointed minister for the economy in 2014. “Several ministers demanded he go,” says one diplomat of Léglise-Costa. “He's one of those people who consider that Europe is the work of an elite and that one can bypass politics.” According to several sources the minister of finances, Michel Sapin, has never forgiven him for carrying out parallel negotiations on certain dossiers.
“These personal stories really don't make any sense,” responds Philippe Léglise-Costa. “In European affairs the basic principle is permanent consultation, with dozens of people a day, and the sharing of information. That is the guarantee of effectiveness and that's the method that I have thus used for more than 20 years. Like anywhere there can be small tensions, but they're infinitesimal.”
'Ridiculous and discourteous'
Enlargement : Illustration 2
The importance of the recent changes goes far beyond the role of one individual. The changes form part of a wider narrative, that of a loss of French influence in Brussels. “Léglise-Costa was the best possible advisor for a president who didn't want to do anything in Brussels,” is the view of one seasoned observer of European affairs.
In the opinion of several observers the political voice of Paris carries less and less weight in French EU policy, to the advantage of the “technocrats” who are very at home in the Brussels “bubble” but who do not have the necessary stature when it comes to doing battle with the German chancellor Angela Merkel. According to this point of view, the French “absence” has left the way clear for what some call a “German Europe”. The silences of the French head of state at meetings of the Council of Ministers, the forum where heads of state and government meet behind closed doors to make major decisions, are devastating. As for example during the muscular exchanges between Angela Merkel and Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi in early 2014 on the question of economic revival in the EU. MPs from the ruling socialist majority in France who take an interest in European affairs also do not understand why France has not fought harder to remove the costs of the military interventions it carries out in the name of the EU from the calculation of its budget deficit.
In many respects Philippe Léglise-Costa, who was already number two at the French permanent representation to the EU in Brussels under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, is the incarnation of a de-politicised vision of Europe. An approach that is not to everyone's taste. “He is, more than anything, a 'technocrat'. He has acquired power that is totally disproportionate to what it should have been,” says French green MEP Yannick Jadot. “He occupied the void, taking advantage of the fact that this government’s ministers don't take an interest in Europe. The fact that these people have such political power and keep it when political majorities change poses an enormous democratic problem,” the Euro MP insists.
Léglise-Costa dismisses such claims. “It's always the president of the Republic who decides and, on the contrary, on very political grounds. That the president played a major role in saving the eurozone, in pulling Europe out of austerity and in redefining its agenda does not seem particularly technocratic to me,” says the diplomat. “One must not confuse the technical nature of negotiations – take for example the European budget, the banking union and the energy-climate framework – and the profoundly political issues that are in fact discussed.”
However, Yannick Jadot cites another example, one which is not flattering for the socialist government in Paris. “When France presided over the European Union [editor's note, in 2008] Léglise-Costa was already in full cry. He wanted to check European ambitions on renewable energies. At the time he lost out in the final decisions, faced with Nicolas Sarkozy and [environment minister] Jean-Louis Borloo. Today he is intervening again on renewable energies, in the context of the discussions on the 'energy and climate package'. But this time he has succeeded in imposing his views, while [current environment minister] Ségolène Royal is non-existent on European questions and François Hollande is conspicuous by his absence.”
Again, Léglise-Costa dismisses the claims. “Ridiculous and discourteous,” he says. “In 2008 France was president of the EU, so I was thus in the position of a negotiator so clearly there was no question of there being such a decision-making process. As for the current French position on the 'climate and energy package', it was of course decided on by the president, the prime minister and the environment minister. France was on the side of the most ambitious states right through the negotiations.”
Will Léglise-Costa's departure from the Elysée ultimately change matters, clarify French strategy in Brussels and mark the start of a new French conquest of the Belgian capital? “It could be good news if France is once against pushing for economic revival. But if it's just to do a Macron ++ [editor's note, a reference to a new law sponsored by minister of the economy Macron which had to be forced through the National Assembly because many on the Left do not support its reforms] then that doesn't reassure me,” says green MP Danielle Auroi, president of the European affairs committee at the National Assembly.
“Over and above the personnel, the real question that worries me is how France views itself in Europe,” says Sylvie Goulard, a French MEP for the centrist parties UDI and Modem, and who has for years criticised the decline of French influence in Brussels. “For the people who are in power in Paris what is their vision for France and for Europe? No one ever replies to this question,” she says. Some European specialists feel that the current wavering by the government might leave the way open for even more influence on the part of the “technocrats”, starting with the diplomats at France's permanent representation in Brussels. The recent blunder over the planned transatlantic trade treaty between the EU and the US – in which a leaked document drawn up by officials suggested that the French wanted to make concessions over key points – might be a sign they are right. The junior minister for overseas trade Matthias Fekl, who dismissed the document as not representing French policy, himself spoke to Mediapart about “routine plans” coming from the “technostructure”, in other words the body of 'technocratic' officials.
At the Elysée itself the trio who will now be trying to sketch out this “vision” for France in Europe will be Laurence Boone, Jacques Audibert and Jean-Pierre Jouyet. Before becoming secretary general of the Elysée under Hollande, Jouyet had been the minister for European affairs under Nicolas Sarkozy from 2007 to 2008 , and in particular helped organise the French presidency of the EU in 2008. At the time the head of his private office was an official by the name of Philippe Léglise-Costa.
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- The French version of this story can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter