France's influence in the European Union shows signs of waning and is likely to diminish further.
The inability of the French presidency to prevent last December's Nice summit from drifting into bad-tempered chaos is one symptom. Another is Chancellor Gerhard Schroder's failure to consult the French over his recent proposals for strengthening EU institutions and renationalising the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) - ideas that are anathema in Paris.
Cohabitation between Jacques Chirac, the Gaullist French president, and Lionel Jospin, the Socialist prime minister, has inevitably made it hard for France to conduct an effective foreign policy - but the malaise has deeper roots. France's political class is not moving fast enough to modernise the country. Today's world bears little relation to the one in which General Charles de Gaulle forged his diplomatic objectives. Yet some of the elite retain a strong belief in French exceptionalism and a disdain for thinking and practices that are "Anglo-Saxon" or "liberal".
This makes it hard for France to swallow economic ideas that many other countries are embracing, whether on labour market reform, energy deregulation or the private provision of pensions. The immediate prospects for the French economy are rosy. But Mr Jospin's left-wing coalition partners, allied to the powerful public sector trade unions, appear to have weakened the government's commitment to tackling structural economic problems.
French diplomats sometimes claim that France's absence from NATO's military organisation and its "prickly" behaviour within that alliance enhance French influence. In fact, the reverse is true. France's Gaullist stance within NATO has made the US defence establishment highly mistrustful of the French. The result is a weakened Atlantic alliance.
Relations with Germany, too, have become increasingly difficult. It is hard for the French to adjust to the fact that today's Germany needs France less than France needs Germany.
The EU's eastward enlargement is bringing Germany new allies and priorities. With every passing year, Germany is less willing to subordinate its interests to those of France. This sometimes provokes the French to overreact, as when at Nice Mr Chirac bluntly refused to cede Germany more votes than France in the Council of Ministers, despite its greater population.
The EU's enlargement is changing its balance of power to France's detriment. The applicant countries are, for the most part, pro-American and proNATO. They tend to favour free trade and, when they see that their farmers will not enjoy the same benefits from the CAP as farmers already in the EU, they will want radical CAP reform. Eastern Europeans also generally speak English. They will not be natural allies of the French.
Anglo-Saxons and others outside France should not celebrate the ebbing of its influence. For if the French start to perceive that the EU is run by others against their interests - this is how the British have always viewed the EU - they may well become more obstreperous and inward-looking.
So what can be done? Germany should be a candid friend, urging the French to rethink some of their assumptions.
France's business elite also has a role to play. Most of those who run the big French companies understand perfectly well how France needs to change but they have generally been reluctant to speak out. They should make their views known and try to educate political leaders.
Finally, Mr Chirac himself could do a lot to shore up French influence. He should announce that France will rejoin NATO's military organisation. That would do a lot to convince the US that the European Security and Defence Policy was not intended to undermine NATO and that France was willing to be a constructive member of the alliance.
Europe and the Atlantic alliance need a France that is stronger and more outward-looking but less exceptional.
The writer is director of the Centre for European Reform
