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Worse Things Happen At Sea
The president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, had a cunning plan for a 'Mediterranean Union'. It was one of the key points of his victory speech on the night of the presidential election. Those nations with shores bordering the Med - including France, Italy and Spain but also Cyprus and Israel, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya - should bring their common historical and cultural heritage into a formal "Club Med".
This plan appears to be drowning. Quite a few media commentators and (some) politicians in France and in many countries on the Continent now despair.
It was supposed to be Sarkozy's Big Idea. A formal get-together of everyone who had borders touching the grand, mythical, historic sea.
Mr Sarkozy's grandiose idea was that a new institution would "Overcome all hatred". (If he has the time, he should read a few, mainly French, treatises, explaining why almost no one liked each other, or were rivals, across the Mediterranean for appoximately three thousand years).
Today, the result of the 'project' is that the French head of state has, essentially, irritated Berlin big time.
Do not forget that Germany has no shoreline at the Mediterranean and that there is still, in the minds of three generations, a cherished idea of Franco-German co-operation.
Is France trying to position itself as "leader" of those North African nations it calls the Maghreb in the same way Berlin hoped to guide the former Soviet states in eastern Europe into democracy?
Another problem is : Who will pay the bill for this extra 'union' ?
German chancellor Angela Merkel may be dreading the day in July when France becomes six-month president of the European Union.
Women and children first.
