Foreign policy: Away and at home RATHER LIKE BRITAIN, France has inherited the mindset of a world power with neither the reach nor the means of one. De Gaulle only partly succeeded in his life's ambition of restoring his country's lost glory. His intransigence ensured that France would be seen as a victor in the second world war and thus a rightful aspirant to a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. But his decisions as president in the 1960s to leave NATO's military-command structure and to keep an independent nuclear deterrent at any price did little to help France's global pretensions. Even so, a mid-sized power with special links across Africa is not insignificant. Under the energetic Mr Sarkozy, France played a global role when it held the EU's rotating presidency in 2008 during Russia's invasion of Georgia, and then again in 2011 when it was president of the G8 and G20 during some of the darker moments of the financial crisis. In 2011 France and Britain also led the military intervention in Libya. The French have gone into several African countries on their own and played a decidedly inglorious role in Rwanda in the 1990s. They are mulling some kind of intervention in Mali. Yet recent talk by Mr Hollande of taking action in Syria is unlikely to go anywhere, partly because there is little enthusiasm for it, but also because defence cuts have undermined France's military capacity. The future must lie in more defence co-operation with Britain, the only other European country with global aspirations. At least France retains a pivotal role in the European Union. A founder member of the then European Economic Community, it will in January celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Elysée treaty with former West Germany that established the Franco-German relationship as the driver of the project. You only have to visit the ossuary at the 1916 battlefield of Verdun, site of a famous handholding between Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand in 1984, to see the importance to Europe of Franco-German reconciliation. Even if the French have not always controlled the Brussels machinery on their own, they have been much better than the Germans at bagging big jobs: president of the European Commission (twice), the commission's secretary-general (for almost 30 years), and successive chief legal advisers at the Council of Ministers. They have also fiercely insisted, against much opposition, on keeping the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Yet France and the French have always been ambivalent about Europe. De Gaulle himself was never comfortable with the EEC. He managed not only to keep Britain out but also to secure an effective French veto under the 1966 Luxembourg compromise. The Maastricht treaty that paved the way for the single currency was largely the brainchild of Mitterrand, whose price for accepting German unification was Germany's abandonment of the D-mark in favour of a single currency over which France hoped to have more control. But when he put the treaty to a referendum of his countrymen in September 1992, it was approved by only a wafer-thin majority. More dramatic still was the 2005 referendum on the draft constitutional treaty for the EU, drawn up by a convention chaired by a former president, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. The result was a resounding "no," after a campaign in which French voters for the first time debated the EU's laws and practices - and took a dislike to an organisation that seemed far too keen on free movement of labour from poorer countries to the east, on free-market liberalism in general and on the supposed benefits of greater competition. Rather like the British, the French have never warmed to the idea of ceding sovereignty to Brussels. Not French enough Many French politicians believe that the EU has changed from a project that was designed partly in France's interests - for example, getting German taxpayers to pay a large chunk of subsidies to French farmers - into one that frequently acts against them. They are painfully aware that France has less influence in an EU of 27 countries than it did in one of six, nine or 15, whereas a unified Germany has a lot more. Even the French language, once dominant in the corridors of Brussels, has lost out to English. To some in Paris this is symptomatic of the triumph of Anglo-Saxon liberalism inside the European institutions. France led the opposition to the notorious (in Paris) "Bolkestein" directive that tried unsuccessfully to free up EU trade in services (and enrich the continent). This is not a left-right issue. Bruno Le Maire, a conservative who was Mr Sarkozy's agriculture minister, attacks the EU for being too concerned to protect consumers instead of producers and jobs. He cites EU rules that prevent schools in Normandy from buying locally grown but more expensive apples for their meals. He denounces the EU as more liberal even than the United States. And he says he would like to rebuild a (presumably rather less open) new grouping around the euro zone of 17, not the current EU of 27. He might find himself in surprising agreement with Arnaud Montebourg, the left-leaning minister for productive recovery. Mr Montebourg believes that EU laws and regulations inhibit the sort of proactive industrial policy he favours. He accuses the EU of the "Talmudic application of rules designed 50 years ago." Although the French left has traditionally been more pro-European than the French right, that is by no means true across the spectrum. This sharpens the dilemmas facing Mr Hollande over the EU and the euro crisis. The 2005 referendum was undoubtedly Mr Hollande's most traumatic political experience. As first secretary of the Socialist Party he was strongly in favour of the constitutional treaty, but many in his party ignored him and it split down the middle, with Laurent Fabius, a former prime minister, leading the "no" campaign. As it happens, Mr Hollande has chosen to make Mr Fabius his foreign minister. His Europe minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, also voted no in 2005. A dispute between the Germans and the French over moves towards political union could turn into a huge obstacle to resolving the euro crisis Mr Hollande himself is instinctively pro-European, far more so than Mr Sarkozy - and it is the Elysée that largely sets France's policy on Europe. Yet he and his officials know that, thanks to the euro crisis, the Franco-German relationship has become hugely unbalanced in Germany's favour. It is Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, who calls the tune in negotiations over the future of the single currency, and thus of the EU more broadly. And her cures for the euro crisis - ever greater fiscal austerity, more structural reforms to promote competition, faster moves towards political and economic union - are not naturally welcomed in Paris. So Mr Hollande is scrabbling to strengthen his position relative to Germany. Charles Grant of the London-based Centre for European Reform believes that he is trying to achieve that in three ways. One is to forge stronger links with Mediterranean countries, especially Italy and Spain, to form a block that could help to counter Mrs Merkel. Naturally that has upset her. Mr Sarkozy preferred to stick closely to Mrs Merkel (hence the label "Merkozy"), not least to identify France with the north and keep the markets happy. Mr Hollande likes to straddle both sides: as his Europe minister puts it, France is the hyphen in Europe's north-south division. Second, Mr Hollande wants to meet the targets set in the European fiscal-compact treaty, which the French parliament has just ratified. And third, he is aiming to raise the French economy's performance by improving its competitiveness. But it will take long and hard toil for France to regain its economic and financial clout when measured against Germany. Then there is the tricky issue of closer political union. As the euro crisis drags interminably on, many political leaders have concluded that the only alternative to a break-up is closer economic and fiscal integration. The Germans believe that the mistake was that the economic and political union promised at Maastricht was never completed, leaving a single currency with neither common fiscal rules nor a proper system of economic governance. As one German official puts it, "if they want our taxpayers" money, we have to control how it is used." So if the euro is to be saved through a banking union, common bank deposit insurance or, eventually, some form of debt mutualisation, in exchange the Germans want a commitment now to a deeper political union, including a new EU treaty. Non, Angela Mr Hollande's new government is looking for a different timetable and a different sequence of events. The buzz-phrase in Paris is not political union but intégration solidaire. This starts from the assertion that France has made a huge sacrifice of sovereignty by accepting the budgetary austerity inherent in the fiscal compact. The next steps ought to be, first, to put fresh emphasis on growth instead of on austerity alone; and then to ensure that the European Central Bank stands fully behind euro-zone governments" sovereign debt. There should also be more rapid moves towards a banking union and the issuing of eurobonds. Only after this "solidarity" is in place might it be right to debate deeper political integration. Yet that debate, though still largely taboo in Paris, has already begun in Berlin and Brussels. A group led by the German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, has proposed majority voting in foreign policy, a European army, an elected European Commission president and more powers for the European Parliament. José Manuel Barroso, the current commission president, has called for a fuller "federation of nation-states." Such talk is airily dismissed in France, where it is said that, whenever Europe is going through a crisis, the Germans and the commission start talking about political union without really meaning it. However, this time may be different. A dispute between the Germans and the French over moves towards political union could turn into a huge obstacle to resolving the euro crisis. In effect, the Germans are saying they will not lend their credit card to other euro members without a prior commitment to much tougher controls and deeper political integration. The French insist the euro zone needs Germany's credit card now, and they are not ready to discuss more integration until later. These opposing positions could cause a serious impasse. Logic suggests the Germans will prevail, but French obstructiveness could be costly.