Paris return trip chances fade for Lamy

Having well and truly burned his bridges with his homeland, the ‘anglo-saxon’ Frenchman Pascal Lamy is fully expected to turn down one last effort by Paris to lure him back.

A proposed post at the head of a new national ‘High Council’ on social security is unlikely to tempt the EU trade commissioner to return to the fold when his Brussels mandate comes to an end in November.

Sources close to the commissioner insist that “no proposals have been made,” but that “in any case, I can’t see the commissioner being interested by this proposal.”

One fellow member of the French socialist party added about the post that it was a “poisoned chalice I would not wish on my worst enemy.”

If this were not enough to pour cold water on Jean-Pierre Raffarin’s hopes to have a man of Lamy’s stature a figurehead for his government's social security reform efforts, Lamy himself has already preempted such a move. He has repeatedly uttered preferences for a new post “of international scope.”

Even if Lamy were eyeing a return to national politics, he could hardly expect a ‘prodigal son’ welcome.

At one stage in the running for the top job at the International Monetary Fund that came up for grabs recently, Paris steadfastly refused to back his candidacy, and did not even react when Lamy showed an interest to be next commission president.

Raffarin’s plans aside, and despite Lamy’s reputation in Paris as a brilliant high-level official, the more powerful Jacques Chirac has not hidden his displeasure for Lamy’s unpatriotic habit of steering Europe down a very un-French path in commercial negotiations.

“Too Anglo-Saxon” Chirac has been known to mutter in private about the man whose nomination as EU trade commissioner he himself approved.

The last nail in Lamy’s national political career coffin will have been his recent major concession in World Trade Organisation talks to put an end to the EU’s agricultural export aid.

“He is going beyond his negotiation mandate” said an irate Hervé Gaymard, French farm minister.

“I have some doubts about the method used,” added the country’s trade minister François Loos.

And only yesterday, a spokesman for the president’s party the UMP spoke forth with a telling insight into how Chirac’s political allies eye their estranged Brussels emissary.

“The UMP denounces in no uncertain terms the attitude of the European Commissioner Pascal Lamy who, through proposals that have not been debated, is calling into question our model of agriculture à la française.”

Given Lamy’s nationality, the UMP official added, “it is paradoxical that [he] should be giving the impression of taking the lead on the most extreme proposals in the way of dismantling agricultural export aids.”

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