Stop blaming others, angry EU Commissioner hits out at French minister's Front National jibe

An angry European Commissioner on Monday blasted as "false and absurd" French minister Arnaud Montebourg’s claim that the EU was fuelling extremism across Europe.

Reuters/Vincent Kessler

Montebourg, Minister for Industrial Revival, made the comments in the wake of a strong showing in a bye election on Sunday night, by the far right Front National.

The seat was actually won by the opposition, mainstream right wing UMP candidate, in second round a run-off with the Front National, after the candidate for the ruling Socialist Party was eliminated in the first round.

EU commissioner Michel Barnier, himself a Frenchman, hit out at Montebourg on French television, in the latest volley in a growing public quarrel between the current French government and Brussels.

"What the minister, Mr Montebourg, has to say is both false and absurd," Barnier told France 2 television.

Barnier insisted the EU could not be blamed for growing support for the anti-immigration, anti-European Union, Front National party.

"I've had it up to here with this and I say that with a degree of anger," Barnier said. "I've had enough of hearing ministers in my country, politicians from left and right, saying that it is all somebody else's fault, looking for scapegoats."

Montebourg on Sunday accused the Commission of fuelling the FN's resurgence by exerting too much pressure on democratically elected governments.

The outspoken left-wing minister specifically attacked Commission President, saying:
"Mr Barroso is the fuel of the Front National, ..he is the fuel of [Italian protest party leader] Beppe Grillo."

Barroso made himself unpopular among many French politicians when last week he described as “reactionary” France’s insistence that cultural industries be excluded from a proposed EU-US free trade zone.

He made the comment in an interview last week in the American newspaper The International Herald Tribune.

But Montebourg suggested that Barroso's comments were symptomatic of a deeper problem with the way power is wielded by the European Union's executive arm in Brussels.

"In the end, the EU does not act, it is immobile, paralysed. It does not respond to any popular aspiration, on the industrial front, on the economic front or on the budgetary front. And in the end, that furthers the cause of all the pro-sovereignty, anti-European parties in the EU."

Montebourg and other French politicians have repeatedly criticised the European Union's austerity-led response to the eurozone crisis.

President Francois Hollande last month publicly warned the Commission it could not dictate France's economic policies.

Commission officials say the French sniping is unfair because they are only implementing the policies that EU member states agree on and which, in the case of the rules on budget deficits and debt levels for eurozone members, France was instrumental in creating.