What Europe's New Leaders Could Do

By PETER GUMBEL / PARIS

Half a century ago, the Prime Minister of France came up with a novel idea. Then as now, the world was occupied with the specter of war in the Middle East--this one precipitated by Egypt's decision to nationalize the Suez Canal. As troops from France and Britain geared up to attempt to take back the canal, Guy Mollet, France's Socialist Prime Minister, secretly presented his British counterpart Anthony Eden with a proposal: What if France and Britain became one country?

The idea was quickly dropped, and when its details were disclosed for the first time earlier this year, citizens of both countries had to suppress their incredulity. These days, it seems, France and Britain are separated by much more than the English Channel. Aside from their distinctive histories and identities, Britain and France in recent years have been on totally different trajectories--London up, Paris down. Personal relations between the two leaders of the past decade, President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Tony Blair, have been prickly. Opposing positions on everything from the war in Iraq to European farm subsidies have at times degenerated into public shouting matches.

But the pendulum of history is about to swing again. In Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown, the two nations are soon to get new leaders who are closer in outlook and personality than any French President and British Prime Minister in living memory. While nobody dreams of reviving the Mollet plan, the two men have an opportunity to put Britain and France back into the same orbit--with potentially significant consequences for the U.S., which for the first time in years is being cheered rather than jeered by a French leader.

At first sight, Brown and Sarkozy hardly seem like soul mates. Sarkozy, who won an easy victory in the French presidential run-off election on May 6, is the son of a Hungarian emigre aristocrat. A mediocre student who still refers painfully to the "humiliations" of his childhood, Sarkozy embraced Gaullist conservatism as a young man, when most of his French contemporaries were reveling in the make-love-not-war spirit of the late 1960s. He triumphed in the French vote by consistently painting himself as the candidate able to lift the nation out of its economic torpor. "Together we will write a new page in our history," he promised the country in his victory speech.

By contrast, Brown, who, barring any last-minute surprise, will succeed Blair this summer, represents continuity: as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he has steered British government economic policy for the past decade. Brown is unlike Sarkozy in that his ambition has been evident since his youth. The son of a Scottish Presbyterian minister, Brown so excelled at school that he was accepted into the University of Edinburgh at age 16, then worked his way up through the ranks of Britain's Labour Party at a time when it was still saddled with socialist dogma.

For all these differences of background, however, Sarkozy and Brown have some unexpected similarities on the big issues: economics, national identity and foreign policy. Both extol the importance of a strong work ethic and advocate free markets--but with caveats. Both have a controversial nationalist bent: while Brown talks about the importance of "Britishness" and has openly resisted the idea of giving up the pound to join Europe's common currency, Sarkozy is seeking to establish tighter citizenship criteria for immigrants. Both feel warm about the U.S. but are cool toward President Bush. Neither gets emotional over the idea of European unity, preferring to see what works--and what doesn't. Both are impatient, often short-tempered and, say their critics, sometimes authoritarian. And both have had to wait their turn to assume power. Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, a London-based think tank, says Sarkozy, Brown and German Chancellor Angela Merkel could create a dynamic team at Europe's core. All three, he says, "are Atlanticist, economically liberal--more or less--and take a pragmatic rather than ideological approach to the European Union and its institutions."

The two men know each other from Sarkozy's brief stint as French Finance Minister in 2004; they met regularly at E.U. ministerial meetings in Brussels. Aides say they get on well and respect each other, but so far that's all. Cozying up to each other is not yet on their agenda; Sarkozy's first two trips as President will be to Berlin and Brussels, not London.

Still, in a country where being called Anglo-Saxon is often an insult, Sarkozy is openly admiring of the ability of Britain and the U.S. to create jobs. He promises to deregulate France's labor market and lower the nearly 9% unemployment rate, one of the highest in Europe and almost double that of Britain's. During a May 2 debate with his Socialist opponent, Segolene Royal, he lauded Britain--along with Ireland, Sweden and Denmark--for its success in combatting unemployment. That sort of attitude drew flak during the campaign--opponents tried to paint him as an American-style neoconservative--but it was a winning message. "He's as economically liberal as it's possible to be for a French politician," says Grant.

There's certainly a lot of lost ground to make up. France has languished in the economic doldrums for the past few years, even as Britain has caught up and overtaken it. In 2002, according to statistics of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Britain's national income per capita exceeded France's for the first time, and since then the gap has grown sharply. Brits, long the poorer neighbors, are now on average 10% richer than the French. That's one important factor feeding a deepening mood of pessimism about the future in France--a mood that Sarkozy is pledging to change.

Brown has challenges of his own. As the architect of Labour's economic policies, he has presided over an economy that has broken records by notching up an astonishing 58 consecutive quarters of growth. Yet he still faces the huge task of raising the quality of public services, particularly the health system, up to French levels. (The French have their own problems extracting value for money from their hospitals, but at least patients don't need to wait six months for a nonemergency medical procedure.) Both countries have a spending problem: French national debt has quintupled since 1980, while Britain is running a budget deficit equivalent to 3.5% of its GDP, according to Peter Spencer, an economics professor at the University of York. While consumer spending has helped fuel Britain's powerful growth, Spencer says, "the bottom line is that we are all living beyond our means."

Britain and France, in other words, have plenty of work to do to get their economic houses in order. And so it's fortunate that Brown and Sarkozy have shown a willingness to challenge conventional wisdom and party ideology. With his talk about positive discrimination and the importance of work, Sarkozy breaks the mold of French politics. Brown too has taken his swipes at hallowed British beliefs. In a 2003 speech in which he outlined his ideas for prosperity and social reform, he sought to identify where markets work, how they can be made to work better and where they have no role all. The ultimate aim, he said, was "to advance the case for a renewed and reformed public realm for the coming decades." They were remarks Sarkozy could have made.

So what will the emergence of Europe's new boys mean for rest of the world? Both men are largely untested novices in foreign policy. Brown has made some initial forays onto the world stage in his capacity as Chancellor, helping launch a global initiative on debt relief for poor African countries. He inherits a messy situation with British troops in Iraq and lacks both Blair's profile in the U.S. and the personal relationship with Bush that Blair nurtured. That could make for some tense moments. Britain has announced plans to withdraw 1,600 of its 7,700 troops from Iraq this year, with the rest to leave in 2008. That's a pledge Brown is likely to stick to, given the disdain for the war among the Labour Party's rank and file. Brown told TIME that "there will be no sense in which we seek to walk away from decisions we made" but that "there are lessons that we've got to learn" from the allies' misadventure in Iraq.

That may indicate an unwillingness to sign up for possible military action against Iran if the West's dispute with Tehran over its nuclear program fails to bend to a diplomatic solution. Sarkozy too would hesitate about attacking Iran. And yet so far, the U.S., Britain and France have remained united on the need to maintain diplomatic and financial pressure on Iran--which Western policymakers quietly believe is having an impact on the regime's behavior. That could provide a basis for cooperation between the U.S. and Europe on other issues. Although he's unlikely to jettison France's combative and historic love-hate relationship, Sarkozy isn't afraid to say that he admires the U.S. That marks a sharp break with Chirac, who often couched his policies as a counterweight to U.S. influence and frequently called for a "multipolar world" that would dilute American power. But Sarkozy and Brown have provided hints that they intend to push Washington to pay more attention to issues beyond the Middle East, such as Third World development and global warming. In his victory speech, Sarkozy addressed "our American friends" and said, "I want to tell them that France will always be at their side when they need her. But I also want to say that friendship means accepting that friends can think differently and that a great nation like the U.S. has the duty not to impose obstacles to the fight against climate change."

Persuading the current U.S. Administration to take more dramatic action on the environment may turn out to be an even more formidable task than curbing unemployment or reforming social services. But if the arrival of Sarkozy and Brown leads to closer cooperation on global issues between the U.S.'s two oldest European allies, then Washington will benefit in the long run. The world tends to be a more agreeable place when your friends get along. [This article contains a table. Please see hardcopy of magazine.] How They Measure Up BROWN SARKOZY 56 AGE 52 Ph.D., University of Edinburgh EDUCATION Law degree, University of Paris, Nanterre One MARRIAGES Two Two sons CHILDREN Three sons Labour PARTY Gaullist Debt relief PET ISSUE Immigration Cape Cod, Mass. VACATION SPOT French Atlantic Coast

With reporting by Catherine Mayer / London, James Graff / Paris