French identity crisis won’t be fixed by flimsy new treaty with Germany

Two events took place this week that showed that France, while trying gamely to present a new face to the world, is struggling, like the rest of us, to escape the prison of its history.

The first was the signing in Aachen (known to the French as Aix-la-Chapelle) of a solemn treaty between France and Germany that, as I mentioned last week, promised much but will almost certainly deliver little. Conceived in happier times and intended as a update of the treaty of cooperation signed in 1962 by Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer, the idea was that the European Union’s two most important countries should formally commit themselves to ever closer convergence in the areas of economic development, defence, foreign policy and, of course, European integration.

For France, Emmanuel Macron took centre-stage; for Germany, Angela Merkel. But there was an entire supporting cast, including the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, and his opposite number on the European Council, Donald Tusk. It was like a fast-food version of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and about equally productive.

No one seriously believes that either side will deliver on the deal beyond rhetoric and goodwill committees. Instead, the two will continue to muddle through much as they do now. With Macron and Merkel both seriously weakened by disquiet and protest within their own frontiers, the expectation is that the treaty will be quietly filed away under ”General,” to be forgotten until the next time the Franco-German motor is cranked back into life.

Off-stage, populists did their best to be scathing. Taking her lead from the fact that the one down-to-earth component of the treaty is an agreement to rationalise transport links along and across the two countries’ shared frontier, as well as encouraging bilingual creches in border communities, Marine Le Pen, leader of Le Rassemblement National – formerly Le Front National – claimed that Macron was in the process of selling Alsace-Lorraine back to the Germans.

Not to be outdone, Nicholas Dupont-Aignan, a former Gaullist who in 2007 founded the breakaway Debout la France (France Arise) party – under no circumstances to be confused with the far-Left La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) of the neo-Marxist Jean-Luc Mélenchon – condemned what he said was Macron’s plan to let Berlin dictate France’s foreign policy and apply Franco-German law to French sovereign territory.

The fact that both claims were “fake news” hardly mattered. What was important was the populist mood music – The Song of Germany (or, as it might be, Deutschland Über Alles) drowned out by the Marseillaise.

In Berlin, meanwhile, the leader of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland, Alexander Gauland, accused Macron and Merkel of wanting to create a “super-EU” inside the existing European Union. “We populists ask that everyone take care of their own country first,” he intoned. “And we don’t want Macron to do it with German money.”

That, at least, gets to the heart of the matter. The fact that neither the French nor the German leader is in any position to deliver any kind of significant change is the reality behind the posturing. Watching over them as they signed their 16-page document was an elaborate wall-hanging featuring Charlemagne, or Karl der Grosse, surmounted by the stars of what were no doubt intended to represent the European Union. The emperor of the Franks, buried in nearby Aachen cathedral, will not have been impressed by what he saw. This was not how he concluded business.

The week’s second symbolic upgrade was the publication of the Michelin Guide for 2019. In recent years, the guide has become a symbol of the ossification of French cuisine, obsessed with tradition and formality to the exclusion of experiment and, well … fun. But, after a year of tumult, involving the resignation of three of its stalwarts, this year’s distribution of celestial approval was intended as clear evidence of a shift towards the modern and the everyday.

According to Gwendal Poullennec, Michelin’s new director, best known for his launch of guides to the finest restaurants in the United States and Asia, 2019 represents a genuine break with the past.  “France,” he told guests at an Oscars-style launch ceremony attended by the industry’s great and good, “is sending a signal that French gastronomy is reaching new heights.”

We’ll see about that.

A trio of three-star chefs (on whose indignity we shall not dwell) were ruthlessly demoted and just two elevated in their place: one, in Menton, in which the chef-proprietor, Mauro Colagreco, is an Argentinian of Italian heritage; the other, in Annecy, next to the Swiss border, run by Laurent Petit, the son of a village butcher, who, with Alain Ducasse and the late-lamented Joël Robuchon, founded the Collège Culinaire de France in 2011.

A brace of new two-star restaurants were promulgated, two in Paris, the others in Marseille,  Montlivault, in the Loire Valley, and Cancale in Brittany.

The newly ennobled establishment in Marseille is AM, named after its chef-proprietor Alexandre Mazzia. According to its website, AM “creates a cuisine of emotion, refined, lively, precise, whose source is the story of its owner … to discover his cuisine is to follow the convolutions of his thought, but also of his feelings.”

Convoluted? AM? Pass the HP.

Elsewhere, an avalanche of pushy newcomers was revealed, 68 in total, including some that in past years would have been regarded as too avant-garde, or simply too “foreign,” to be included as part of the nation’s gastronomic patrimony. I don’t doubt that they are all deserving of acclaim and plan to visit them in turn, afterwards presenting the bill, plus the cost of accomodation, to Reaction.life. But how different and how innovative remains a matter of taste. I did like one review, though, for Tomy & Co, in Paris: “Service is on point and supports, rather than detracts from the brilliance of the kitchen.” That’s what we like to hear. Macron and Merkel take note.