French diplomacy put to the test of absolute presidentialism

Texts, history, practice

This reminder raises the question of the exact role of the President of the Republic in the development and conduct of foreign policy under the Fifth Republic. To address this question, we must have three parameters in mind: texts, history, practice. The text of the Constitution is quite vague when it comes to foreign policy. Title II of the Constitution dedicated to the President of the Republic mentions (article 5) the fact that the president is “the guarantor of national independence, territorial integrity and respect for treaties”an article which gives him very general and almost limitless competence. Article 13 gives it jurisdiction to “appoint ambassadors and general officers”. Finally, article 14 entrusts him with the responsibility “to accredit ambassadors and extraordinary envoys” and reminds that “foreign ambassadors are accredited to him”. In article 15, it is specified that the president is “the head of the armed forces and chairs the defense councils and committees”.

The government for its part (article 20) “determines and conducts the policy of the nation” and the Prime Minister is “responsible for National Defense”. Finally, Title VI of the Constitution specifies that the president “negotiates and ratifies treaties and is informed of any negotiations aimed at the conclusion of an international agreement not subject to ratification”. And, obviously, it is recalled in article 55 that the “regularly ratified or approved treaties have, from their publication, an authority superior to that of the laws”.

We therefore see that the powers of the Head of State, according to the Constitution, are very general, relatively imprecise, and at no time mention the notion of exclusivity of foreign policy and even less that of “reserved domain”. It was Jacques Chaban-Delmas who, in 1959, during a congress of the Gaullist party, the UNR, invented the theory of the “reserved domain”. If the texts do not give the exclusive right to conduct diplomacy to the head of state, it is indeed history and the institutional practice of the Fifth Republic that led to this result.

A long history of the “reserved domain”

First of all, diplomacy has always been in France the prerogative, even the “reserved domain” of sovereigns. Louis XIII, Louis XIV, Louis The executive, the government had little to say, except to measure the cost of wars and raise alert when necessary. This tradition was maintained under the Republic, the constitutional laws of 1875 being on this point even more cryptic than our current constitution. In fact, in 1875, the president of the Third Republic “has armed force. He appoints all civil and military positions. The envoys and ambassadors of foreign powers are accredited to him. »

The presidents of the Third Republic did not hesitate, when necessary and according to their personality, to deal with foreign policy directly with the competent minister. Félix Faure during the Dreyfus affair, Émile Loubet during the Moroccan crises, Raymond Poincaré during the European crisis of 1914 (his trip to Saint Petersburg at the end of July particularly illustrates this situation, then, later, by appealing to his enemy, Clemenceau), intervened in this political domain.

It is at the Élysée that the main directions of foreign policy are decided

But more than the constitutional texts, more than the historical tradition, it is the institutional practice as put in place since 1958 which has led to this presidential pre-eminence that we know. The first President of the Fifth, Charles de Gaulle, was obviously marked by his short stint with Paul Reynaud in 1940 and by the powerlessness in June and July 1940 of the President of the Republic in the process leading to the war and the June armistice. About the role of the head of state, Albert Lebrun, de Gaulle writes in his War memories this cruel sentence, that misfortune was “that there was neither leader nor state”. It is perhaps this calamitous experience which formatted the practice established in 1958, even beyond the texts. Not only did General de Gaulle come to power with strong personal convictions on the sovereignty and independence of France, with experience – that of 1940 on the impotence of power -, but he accessed the Élysée at a particular moment in history: the Cold War, the successive crises in Berlin, and obviously the Algerian War meant that from 1958, the head of state intervened and in fact led foreign policy, in great displeasure of his then Prime Minister, Michel Debré.

Monarchical tradition

Relying on the same Minister of Foreign Affairs for ten years, Maurice Couve de Murville, former ambassador to Cairo then Washington and Bonn, as well as ambassadors he knew or had known personally, the Seydoux de Clausonne in Rabat then Bonn, and at the UN, Courcel in London, Dejean in Moscow, Jeanneney in Algiers, Alphand in Washington, it is indeed from the Élysée that all diplomatic initiatives start from 1958 and 1969: recasting of NATO in 1958, (difficult) dialogue with Washington, European policy (the “empty chair” and the Luxembourg compromise), agreement with Adenauer’s Germany (and Élysée Treaty of 1963), constant opposition to the entry of the United Kingdom into the EEC, the “Arab” policy of Paris at the time of the Six Day War, the rapprochement with Moscow and the beginning of a ” French Ostpolitik, the choice of the “open sea” finally, with the withdrawal of the integrated NATO command in 1966.

It is therefore at the Élysée that the main directions of French foreign (and military) policy are decided. De Gaulle relies on his ambassadors to whom he gives instructions. We are therefore reconnecting with a certain monarchical tradition. Tradition taken up and increased by his successors, Georges Pompidou, who allowed London’s entry into the Common Market, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, at the origin of the European and G7 summits, obviously François Mitterrand who subscribes without hesitation to the Gaullian tradition and practice (Euromissile crisis in 1983, African policy, Maastricht in particular). Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy, François Hollande complete the functioning of the system. It is only during a period of cohabitation that the reserved domain of 1958 is (a little) shared with the Prime Minister, which, paradoxically, gives very great room for maneuver to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Quai d’Orsay, caught between the two heads of the executive: Alain Juppé in 1993 in the Balladur government, Hubert Védrine in 1997 under Lionel Jospin, experienced this.

Emmanuel Macron, for his part, confirms the tradition, but amplifies or distorts it: he believes he knows everything about diplomacy and no longer needs the diplomats he does without. He does not hesitate to transfer those who resist. The Quai d’Orsay was brought to heel and in April 2022, the President of the Republic abolished the diplomatic and consular corps – the “house” unions having contested the appointment of one of his relatives not meeting the conditions as consul general in Los Angeles. It would be easy and simplistic to assert that the setbacks in our foreign policy (in Africa and particularly in the Sahel, the Maghreb, in the Pacific with the Australian crisis in 2021, in the Middle East as well as in Lebanon, the diminishing of our role in Europe) are only due to this monarchical behavior. Our economic situation and our budgetary carelessness make us inaudible, as there is no good foreign policy without solid finances. But it is also true, as mentioned above, that Louis XIII and his successors relied on experienced “grand clerks”; there is no shortage of them among diplomats today. Diplomacy is not just a matter of “gestures” or “gesticulations”, but above all of experience and cold analysis.