Nicolas Sarkozy's plan for a Mediterranean Union is in trouble

IT IS supposed to be his Big Idea. He announced the project in his victory speech on election night last May, and entrusted it to one of his closest advisers. Yet President Nicolas Sarkozy's plan for a Mediterranean Union is prompting exasperation both within his government and among fellow Europeans.

Mr Sarkozy's idea, which he summarised in a grandly titled “Appeal from Rome” last December and announced alongside Italian and Spanish leaders, is to get the countries around the Mediterranean to talk to each other in a new forum, where all members are considered equal. Although Mr Sarkozy originally had grandiose ideas for a union that would “overcome all hatred” and bring peace and civilisation to the region that is the cradle of European culture, his ambitions now are more modest. The plan is to deal with non-ideological projects, such as cleaning up the sea or transport links. He has invited the leaders of all the littoral states to Paris on July 13th, ahead of a meeting between them and other European-Union leaders on July 14th, at the start of France's six-month EU presidency.

From the beginning, however, other Europeans have had their doubts. The British were initially suspicious because Mr Sarkozy seemed to see the Mediterranean Union as a way of diverting Turkey from its bid to join the EU (which Britain supports). Others could not understand the need for a new pan-Mediterranean outfit when there is one already, inelegantly named the “Barcelona process”. And who, asked others, would foot the bill?

Most wary of all have been the Germans. Not only did the new union seem devised to exclude them but its relation to the EU has been muddled. At first, the French did not see it as an EU matter. But this, viewed from Berlin, looked like an aggressive move to launch a rival body without following the cherished tradition of Franco-German co-operation. Now that the French have made the launch of the project a quasi-EU event, there is a new concern: finance. Dark voices in Berlin worry that Mr Sarkozy may try to use EU money to take the political credit for projects on the southern shore of the Mediterranean, home to several ex-French colonies.

None of this has helped to soothe relations between Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mr Sarkozy, already strained by disagreements over other matters, from nuclear energy to the role of the European Central Bank. So fraught did Franco-German feelings get recently that Jean-Pierre Jouyet, France's Europe minister, felt compelled to talk in Le Figaro newspaper of a “real bone of contention”. “The Germans are very sensitive to the principle of prior consultation,” he said, and gave warning that, if unresolved, this row could mar the French presidency.

In Paris, the outburst by Mr Jouyet, who is of the left, was read as a warning shot across the bows of the adviser in charge of the Mediterranean-Union project, Henri Guaino. A former speechwriter for Mr Sarkozy, and now one of his closest counsellors, Mr Guaino voted against the Maastricht treaty, and is regarded with suspicion by French pro-Europeans. What seems to have frustrated Mr Jouyet is the high-handed way in which Mr Sarkozy's Elysée team had brushed aside German concerns. Last week, to calm matters, Mr Guaino himself went to Berlin.

It remains to be seen whether the project will amount to anything of substance. French officials insist Franco-German differences are now narrowing, and that the Germans are interested in taking part in Mediterranean-Union matters that touch them, such as immigration. All the same, wariness lingers. The Germans, without the necessary shoreline, are not on the guest list for the Paris meeting on July 13th. “Those who want to proceed must be able to do so together,” declared Mr Sarkozy, using a line more commonly deployed by EU enthusiasts against Britain, “but those who don't want to must not stop the others from moving forward.”