| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : DECEMBER 18, 2000 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| INTERNATIONAL -- EUROPEAN BUSINESS
The Euro's Godfather Weighs the Continent's Future (int'l edition) A talk with Valery Giscard d'Estaing before the Nice summit Valery Giscard d'Estaing, 74, is the intellectual godfather of the euro and one of Europe's greatest surviving statesmen. The President of France from 1974 to 1981, Giscard is today only a deputy from the Auvergne region in the French Parliament. Yet his voice on European matters carries great weight. Early this year, he, along with former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, called on countries within the euro zone to move quickly on greater political integration. Giscard sat down with BUSINESS WEEK's European Regional Editor John Rossant in Paris to discuss the euro and the Dec. 7-9 summit in Nice, France, where European leaders will gather to discuss the best way to expand the membership of the EU. Q: Will an agreement come out of the Nice Conference that allows the European Union to expand to include nations of Eastern and Central Europe? A: It's going to be very difficult to get a good solution in Nice, so it would be better to continue the negotiations. It would be very bad for the future of Europe to have a poor solution. The difficulty is that Sweden has the next presidency of the European Union, and they are less concerned by European issues than we are in France. We've been at it for 45 years. Q: The euro seems to have been in crisis almost from its birth. Could things have been managed differently, and how much blame is due European Central Bank (ECB) President Wim Duisenberg? A: One problem is the choice of the head of the ECB. We didn't go about it in the right way. We needed a man at the level of other heads of state in Europe, a statesman. We're not only dealing with technical problems but with getting the entire international community to accept a new currency. Instead, we opted for the technical approach: Central bankers chose one of their own. That wasn't what [the Maastricht Treaty] stipulated, which was that governments choose the ECB president. In the U.S., the governor of the Federal Reserve is, in terms of his influence, right up there with the President. Here in Europe, most people don't even know who the ECB president is. Q: When will the euro strengthen? A: Until now, the euro has been abstract and hasn't enjoyed public support. An abstract currency can't be a strong currency. Now, though, things are turning around, and the euro rate is more acceptable. With the slowdown in the U.S., it's likely that the euro will stabilize at these levels or even strengthen a little more. There will be a new attitude in U.S. business circles to let the dollar soften in value. Q: German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer set out a federal vision of Europe last May, a kind of United States of Europe. Does such a vision have a chance of being realized? A: We are living in a time when there is no clearly outlined political project for Europe, nor politicians ready to support one. [Yet] the evolution of Fischer has been very revealing. Here's a man who didn't have a European policy, [but] in two years he came up with a project which is more or less what should be done. I would have liked France to have responded more positively to Fischer's proposals than it did. [But] our two political leaders [President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin] want to avoid the debate. Q: How do you see U.S. policy developing under a Bush or a Gore Administration? Bush has indicated he may be less interventionist than Gore, for example in the Balkans. A: So much the better! I don't think Europeans should fear George W. Bush. As Europeans, we want good relations with the United States, and we don't want too active an interference in our affairs, which can destabilize the progress of Europe. What Bush has been saying corresponds more to European expectations. We're no longer in the cold war, when we needed a good partnership and an active presence. That's finished. And we're not far from being able to deal with Balkan matters ourselves. When the events in Bosnia and Kosovo started unfolding, we were badly prepared, and the use of military means--transport, logistics, even bombing--presupposed an active American presence. The policy of Germany--an essential actor--had been one of nonintervention. That's changed. And military organization [among Europeans] hadn't even started. Now it has, and the internal European need for active American military participation is finished. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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