European elections: where the French parties stand on defence and agricultural policies

EUROPEAN DEFENCE POLICY, NATO AND MILITARY SPENDING

The European Parliament elections campaigning in France has not included any significant debate over European defence and security policies. The absence of that debate is to be regretted given that two key issues are a source of division among the parties, namely membership of NATO, which represents an obstacle to the creation of a European defence force, and an increase in the French military budget, as argued for by French President Emmanuel Macron. François Bonnet analyses where the parties stand.

The European Union (EU) has witnessed two wars close to its outlying borders which it had largely contributed to causing.  One is the continuing strife in Libya, which has remained in chaos since the military intervention there in 2011 decided by France’s then president Nicolas Sarkozy and then British prime minister David Cameron to topple the regime of the late dictator Muammar Gaddafi. The military operation was led by NATO. The North African country remains war-torn today, and in the background it is the whole of the Sahel region that has been destabilised by the conflicts.

The other is Ukraine, which has remained fractured since 2014 by a conflict simmering in its eastern regions and which has lost its governance over Crimea, now annexed by Russia. The origins can be found in the EU’s push for a partnership with Ukraine in a continuing push to enlarge NATO’s membership. European political leaders and advisors all perfectly knew that the move was a threat to crossing red lines drawn up by Russia.

“NATO has become a firefighter- arsonist for European security,” wrote Pascal Boniface, director and founder of the French-based think tank the Institute of International and Strategic Relations (IRIS) in his essay Requiem pour le monde occidental (‘Requiem for the Western world’).

The two recent examples of Libya and Ukraine demonstrate the urgency for a reform of the EU’s defence and security policies, and which leads to the question of what to do about NATO – leave it, dissolve it or urge a US pull-out as threatened by President Donald Trump? Could the answer be to build a “European armed force” which might contribute to the progressive extinction of the trans-Atlantic alliance, which last month celebrated its 70th anniversary?

The policy programmes of the principal parties in France standing in the European Parliament elections are unfortunately largely timid in addressing the issue, although three of them – the radical-left France Insoumise, the French Communist Party and the far-right Rassemblement National (the former front National) all call for an end to France’s membership of NATO.

The communists call for France’s withdrawal from the organisation “in the perspective of the dissolution of this military alliance”, which they denounce for “a bellicose strategy of preventive war and its submission to the political and industrial choices of the United States”.

For the France Insoumise party, it wants a withdrawal in order to “put an end to the interference” of the US in Europe, while it also rejects the idea of a pan-European defence force which it argues would be subservient to NATO “and turned against Russia”.

The Far-right Rassemblement National, meanwhile, wants France out of NATO’s joint military command because “the anti-Russian obsession of NATO does not serve the sovereign interests of France”.

While President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling LREM party, along with the conservative Les Républicains and the Parti Socialiste do not address the subject directly, it is well known that none of them want to see France leave NATO. The Green party, EELV, and the leftist Génération.s have remained unclear over their position. The Greens support the idea of creating “a common European army that is autonomous with regard to NATO”, while Génération.s (a breakaway party founded by former Parti Socialiste presidential candidate Benoît Hamon, has voiced its concerns over “a European Union which is becoming militarised at an alarming rate” – but which offers no policy on the matter.

The issue of membership, and the actions, of NATO prompt two further questions. One is about the US military presence in Europe, from army bases, to nuclear weapons, and to the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) shield system. The Greens join the radical-left, the far-right and the communists in calling for US nuclear weapons to be removed from Europe, along with the ABM system. The latter three are joined by Génération.s in calling for a revival of an international nuclear disarmament process.

The second question is about the military spending of the EU’s 28 member states. Since his election, as also during his election campaign, US President Donald trump has continuously demanded that European countries increase their military spending, to bring it to at least 2% of their GDP, and that they contribute more towards NATO’s operating budget. In 2018, Trump publicly criticised Germany for not spending enough on defence and accused it of, in the process, encouraging other countries not to do so. In face of US pressure, central European nations have significantly increasing their military expenditure.

Amid the argument a simple fact emerges which most of the supposedly recalcitrant governments are well aware of: if the European bloc wants to proceed towards the creation of a European armed force, with a programme of common weapons, it must spend much very more on defence.

This emerging common theme, strongly supported by the defence industries of France, Britain and Germany, raises questions over the objectives of such a European force, its strategy, and the inherent dangers it would pose. Does Russia really constitute a military threat? With a defence budget that is slightly less than that of France (at 61 billion dollars compared with a French budget of 63 billion dollars, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI), and which is ten times less than that of the US (at more than 640 billion dollars), Russia is, in effect, an average-sized military power.

The total military spending by European countries which are members of NATO was 264 billion dollars in 2018, a bloc which, taken as a whole, represents the second-largest defence budget in the world, behind that of the US and ahead of that of China, and which represented a year-on-year rise of 4.2%, according to the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies.

While, in France, the conservative Républicains party, the ruling centrist LREM party, the Parti Socialiste and the far-right Rassemblement National all argue for an increase in the country’s military budget, the Green party, EELV has remained quite on the issue. On the other hand, the radical-left France Insoumise, the Communists and Génération·s want to see military spending reduced within an agenda of new disarmament treaties.

The issue has had little prominence in public political debate, such as it is that the weight of the US in ensuring European security has frozen EU member states from taking a clear position. French President Emmanuel Macron’s push for a European defence force, and the several European military cooperation projects, have stalled amid political disagreements, US pressure and commercial rivalry between the continents major defence firms. Macron’s project for a European security council in which Britain would be an associate member, which his LREM party argues for, appears stillborn in face of opposition to it from numerous EU member states.

A French-German treaty signed between the leaders of the two countries on January 22nd details that France supports Germany’s admission to the United Nations Security Council. While the LREM has not made much of this pledge, it is supported by the Parti Socialiste, while the Greens have said they prefer that such a seat at the UN should go to a representation of the EU.     

Regarding the idea of tighter international control of weapons sales, the LREM, conservatives, radical-left and far-right have not taken a stand. The socialists propose “an increase in the control of weapons exports” and a “universal ratification of the United Nations treaty on arms sales”. The Greens want an end to exports of arms produced in the EU, while the communists and Génération·s call for a halt of weapons sales to countries which are at war or which are “the subject of reports that establish [their] violations of human rights”.

• The French version of this article can be found here.

EUROPEAN AGRICULTURAL POLICY AND THE FUTURE OF THE CAP

With reforms to the EU’s biggest budget line, the Common Agricultural Policy, in the pipeline, French parties campaigning in the European Parliament elections are largely singing from the same hymn sheet: maintain a high level of spending, protect farmers from unfair competition, and transition to organic farming. Christophe Gueugneau analyses their programmes.

The future of the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the infernally complex and controversial system of farm subsidies that accounts for almost 40% of the bloc’s overall budget, will be determined by the results of Sunday’s elections for the EU Parliament.

Member states are currently in negotiation over reforming the CAP, which EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Phil Hogan has said needs to be made simpler, greener and more flexible. In essence, the CAP, which came into being in 1962, is supposed to deliver food security to European consumers and a decent income to its farmers. But its opponents say the way it works in practice encourages intensive farming and heavy use of pesticides. This, according to Greenpeace, has “grave impacts on our climate, our environment and our health.”

The EU Commission’s reform plan is hardly revolutionary, but to account for new spending (on, for example, defence and migrants) and to offset the revenue dip that will be brought about by Brexit, it calls for a cut in the CAP’s overall budget.

Twenty-one of the EU’s 28 member states, including France and Germany, are against the proposal. As the plan stands, it would see CAP payments to France, the policy’s biggest beneficiary, fall from an annual 9.4 billion euros in the 2014-2020 cycle to 8.9 billion euros a year for the 2021-2027 cycle. For the country’s 400,000 farmers, who receive and who comprise a powerful political constituency, the May 26th elections are ones to watch keenly. This is because the polls will lead to the appointment of new EU commissioners who will help draft the Union’s 2021-2027 budget.

Although France’s political parties run the gamut of a very broad Left-Right spectrum, when it comes to CAP reform, it seems there is more that unites than divides those running for election on Sunday.

The candidates put forward jointly by President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist La Republique En Marche (LREM) party and its ally, the centre-right Modem party, want to “defend the agricultural budget to ensure a high level of income for all farmers”. (In keeping with his penchant for the grandiose, Macron has dubbed his election campaign “Renaissance” – a deliberate echo of his recent op-ed calling for a “European Renaissance”.)

On the far-right, the Rassemblement National (RN, formerly the Front National, which has been riding high in the polls) has denounced the proposed cuts and called for the CAP to be scrapped in favour of a “French agricultural policy”.

“The internal market is the key to everything,” said RN candidate Hervé Juvin, the party’s principal advisor on ecological issues. “France should be able to avail itself of countercyclical support, of support that is genuinely proportional to every farmer’s activity.”

The radical-left party, La France Insoumise (LFI, for “France Unbowed”), whose list of candidates is topped by former Oxfam France spokeswoman Manon Aubry, has called, like the Parti Socialiste, for the CAP to be renamed the “Common Agricultural and Food Policy” and has proposed an “agri-ecological and organic transition, via contractualisaton, based on mixed farming, with conversion contracts put in place with revenue targets for each farmer”. The party also wants to see a “massive transfer” of CAP subsidies away from vast industrial farming businesses towards smaller producers and organic farmers. Currently, some 80% of the CAP budget goes to just 20% of Europe’s agricultural businesses.

The Parti Communiste also wants the current CAP budget to be maintained.

The Parti Socialiste (PS) – for which CAP reform is the main campaign battleground – and its allies in the nascent centre-left Place Publique party want to “facilitate access to training and aid for a transition to organic farming” and to introduce a lower rate of value-added tax on organic farming products to make them more affordable so as to boost the sector’s growth.

Meanwhile, Génération·s, a small party founded by former socialist minister and candidate for the PS in the 2017 presidential elections, Benoît Hamon, wants protective measures put in place that would “fully cover farmers’ costs in switching to organic agriculture”.

Macron’s LREM is a little coyer when it comes to the transition towards organic, advocating a move to give agricultural aid to farms across Europe that are “clean and respectful of animal welfare”. At the same time, it would like to see “a massive increase in greening” by doubling the area under organic farming, no livestock fed on GM products, no pesticides used over areas of potable water and an end to the gruesome practice of grinding live chicks.

These ambitions mark something of a departure from current government policy in France, which in 2017 stopped giving grants for the maintenance of existing organic farms in favour of funding farms’ conversion to organic, and whose National Assembly last year removed animal welfare provisions, including a ban on chick grinding, before passing a key piece of agriculture sector legislation known as the Loi Égalim.

Even the conservative Les Républicains party is aboard the green bandwagon with its plan to boost conversion grants. On the issue of pesticides, its manifesto, like that of the RN, has nothing at all to say.

Unsurprisingly, LFI and Europe Écologie Les Verts (EELV) - the centre-left Green political party – are more militant on this issue. LFI wants to see an EU-wide end to the use of GM products and pesticides, including neonicotinoids, which are blamed for collapsing bee populations and have been banned in France since September 2018.

“If the EU does not take these steps, each Member State should be able to apply them unilaterally, including to imports from other Member States,” insists the LFI manifesto.

EELV wants to see a ban on synthetic pesticides. Like the PS, it proposes allocating 70% of the CAP’s budget to agricultural practices aimed at abolishing synthetic pesticides and fertilizer. The PS wants 2030 set as a deadline in the case of synthetic pesticides.

Only LFI and EELV take a position on biofuels. These green-sounding crops have come under increasing criticism because of the way they have replaced food production and, in the global South, led to widespread deforestation. While EELV proposes ending support for “biofuels and energy crops”, LFI goes further, proposing a ban on imports of products resulting from deforestation, notably palm oil used for fuel, and an outright ban on all biofuels.

All of the major parties except LREM and LR are proposing some kind of agricultural protectionism at the European level. The RN wants to slap duties on “globalised anti-ecological imports”, as does Génération·s, which would fund its new CAP by “taxing imports from outside the EU of non-organic food products.”

LFI wants market protection for farmers while ensuring food sovereignty. It rejects “the agri-business model oriented to exports out of the EU” and favours “protecting quality European agricultural production” with labels and protected designations of origin that are currently unrecognized by free trade deals such as CETA. The party is calling for an exit from “free-trade deal agriculture”.  Similarly, the PS wants “an agricultural exception” in trade agreements. The communists, meanwhile, want to see duty applied at the EU’s borders to “imports of products that do not comply with social and environmental norms or with the Paris climate accord.”

• The French version of this article can be found here.

English version by Anthony Morland