France and Britain have long held opposing views on Europe, writes Lara Marlowe in Paris
The failure of the Brussels summit ensured that the last two years of Jacques Chirac's presidency will be devoted to blocking initiatives by British prime minister Tony Blair, as well as French interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
Mr Chirac's twin nemeses are so similar - both are pro-American economic liberals more than 20 years his junior - that some French commentators now speak of the inevitability of a "Blairo-Sarkozyste Europe".
To Mr Chirac's dismay, much of the French political class blame him as well as Mr Blair for the disastrous summit.
About 1am on Saturday, speaking in adjacent conference rooms, Chirac and Blair exchanged insults. "I deplore that the United Kingdom refused to pay a reasonable and fair share of the cost of enlargement," Mr Chirac said. "It wanted to keep its whole cheque, and that led other countries to drive the stakes up." It was "pathetic" and "moving" to see poor new member countries offer to sacrifice to satisfy "the selfishness of two or three rich countries", Mr Chirac added.
Though Mr Blair did not name France, he was visibly furious and mocked Mr Chirac, saying: "What I cannot justify is a budget so skewed in the way it is now. To hear some of the statements around the table, to say that the Common Agricultural Policy represents the future, I find bizarre . . ." The clash in Brussels was only the most recent - and damaging - in a long line of Anglo-French disputes. The end of the summit fell on June 18th, the 190th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, just a few miles away.
Since the second World War, France and Britain have held opposing visions of trans-Atlantic relations. Gen Charles de Gaulle explained his refusal to allow Britain to join Europe in 1962, saying: "How could we let a country that paid such allegiance to the Americans enter Europe?" The president of the council, Jean-Claude Juncker, described the failure of the summit as the "confrontation of two concepts of Europe: those who want a big market and nothing else . . . and those who want a politically integrated Europe." Needless to say, Mr Juncker referred principally to Britain and France. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher and Francois Mitterrand also fought over whether Europe should be an Atlanticist free market, or a socially oriented, independent political power.
At a Brussels summit in February 1988, Jacques Chirac (then Mitterrand's prime minister) scandalised Britain when his remark to an aide was overheard and quoted by the tabloids. "What more does this housewife want? My balls on a platter?" Chirac asked.
The two were arguing about budgetary reform and the Cap. Plus ça change.
Messers Blair and Chirac rehearsed their most recent battle nearly three years ago, in October 2002. Mr Chirac demanded an end to the British rebate, obtained by Mrs Thatcher in 1984. Three days later, Mr Blair lashed out against the Cap. Mr Chirac told Blair he was "ill-bred", added that "no one ever talked to me like that before", and concluded: "Our next summit is cancelled."
Ironically, Blair and Chirac are now competing to defend the voters who rejected the constitutional treaty in France and the Netherlands. "There are concerns that our citizens are expressing," Mr Blair said early on Saturday. "Let's listen to them and start setting out an agenda for Europe that actually corresponds to them." Mr Chirac engaged in similar rhetoric, saying European leaders are "obliged . . . to listen to what was said to us, to understand why there is a sort of divorce between Europe as it is being built and Europe as it is perceived by a large number of its citizens."