Paris, France – France wants to deepen its economic and political relationship with Jamaica, but policymakers here suggest that a more aggressive French diplomacy in the Caribbean is likely to be in the context of promoting regional integration and France’s assertion of its Caribbean identity.

“We consider ourselves part of the Caribbean and we want to encourage the integration of the region,” says Patrice Paoli, the deputy head of the Americas and Caribbean division of the French foreign ministry. “We wish to have a more encompassing view of the Caribbean and to encourage a greater integration of our Caribbean departments in the region.”

Privately, some officials concede that up until now France’s Caribbean policy has perhaps lacked a sharp focus, if not coherence.

Indeed, France has three departments in the Caribbean – Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guiana, on the South American mainland, next door to Suriname – which form part of what the French call L’outre Mer, or, literally, the outer seas.

But while, through these territories, France is an associate member of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS), the French profile in the English-speaking Caribbean has, until recently, been relatively low and contacts between its regional departments and their neighbours, at best, sparse.

For instance, while Guadeloupe is a 15-minute plane ride south of Antigua, there is little trade or traffic between the two Eastern Caribbean territories.

The fact of a French-based creole being spoken in St Lucia and Dominica, two members of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (Caricom), makes for greater contact between these two former British colonies and Martinique, which they sandwich. But in the past the issues have mostly been about illegal immigration and illegal fishing in each other’s territorial waters.

Like on the African continent, officials admit, France’s relations in the insular Caribbean has been defined by language. So much of its attention has been placed on Haiti, the French-speaking country which shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic.

“Don’t quote me,” says a senior Paris civil service mandarin, “but it is true that there has been a sense of incoherence in our policy in the Caribbean.

“We are looking for better ways to co-operate and the process has to start with closer relations between the departments within our ministries and between ministries,” he adds.

Trade and economics are likely to be among the catalysts for this French introspection and Jamaica is playing a pivotal role in this process.

The winning by the big French construction company Bouygues of a 35-year concession to build, own and operate the US$400- million, 74-kilometre first leg of Highway 2000, officials say, could provide a toe-hold for that company in the Caribbean and provide a fillip for other French companies to more aggressively look for business in the region. Indeed, the decision by the Autoroute du Sud de la France (ASF), which develops and runs toll roads in the south of France, to take a 33 per cent stake in the Highway 2000 operating company, is being seen as a potential start of this process, adding to a French engineering company working on a sewage project in western Jamaica.

While Airbus Industrie is a pan-European consortium, the fact that its headquarters and assembly plants are based in the French city of Toulouse has given it, in popular psychology, a French feel and Air Jamaica operates 20 of its planes.

But that is not all the business that French or French-based companies are seeking to do with Jamaica or vice versa.

According to Dominque Pantz, the Americas unit in the economic and trade department of the Ministry of the Economy, Finance and Industry, COFACA, the export finance and risk insurance outfit, also has under consideration export financing for Renault rubbish trucks and French-built helicopters for Jamaica.

“France would guarantee to finance the acquisitions if the negotiations go well,” says Pantz. “We are always trying to expand markets.”

But officials in Paris understand that business opportunities are unlikely to expand in an environment of social, political and economic instability as is posed by the drug trade and high levels of domestic crime and violence in Jamaica and other Caribbean countries.

“All those problems affect us,” says the foreign ministry’s Paoli. “If there is instability in any neighbour it ultimately affects the Caribbean departments and the drug problem is also a French and European problem. It is a global problem.”

It is concerns such as these that are driving a new thinking in French policy in the L’outre Mer, according to Stephane Catta, who is in charge of international affairs, regional co-operation and European Union-related issues in the ministry that is in charge of France’s overseas departments and territories.

In French Guiana, he notes, an estimated 20 per cent of the population are illegal immigrants, who place pressure on the social infrastructure and contribute to social and other problems in the department.

Most of the illegal immigrants have been driven to the territory because of economic and security problems at home.

“We want to promote regional co-operation and to have closer ties in the region and to help these countries with their economic development, so that they are better capable of keeping their citizens in their countries,” Catta says. “Immigration is not only a problem in L’outre Mer. It is also a problem in mainland France and sometimes produces xenophobic results.”

As part of its programme of engagement, the central government has provided the Caribbean departments with a fund of 750,000 euro each, from which Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guiana can finance projects in neighbour countries. The projects are decided on by a special committee of local elected officials and French ambassadors based in the region.

It is part of a process, Catta explains, of involving “the elected officials more in regional diplomacy”. This is in addition to the work being done by Alain Briotte, a Port of Spain-based special envoy on regional co-operation.

In fact, it was the head of Martinique’s local assembly that led France’s delegation to the recent ACS meeting in Belize, with full authority, after briefings with Catta’s ministry, to take positions on France’s behalf.

Additionally, broad constitutional reform being debated in the French national assembly contain provisions that would allow a limited form of devolution to the L’outre Mer that provide them greater wiggle room for engagement with neighbours. Part of the provisions would be to create two categories of overseas departments: one that would embrace, in their entirety, laws passed in the French national assembly and another that would have the right to enforce variations of the law.

French officials insist that they not only talk, but put their money behind their chat, notwithstanding the fact that this might not be so obvious in the Caribbean.

For example, while France’s contribution to the European Union’s (EU’s) budget is 16 per cent. It puts up 24 per cent of the money in the European Development Fund (EDF), which benefits countries in the region, including Jamaica, and programmes under the Cotonou agreement between the EU and African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of countries.

Additionally, France is looking to substantially increase its official development assistance (ODA), now at 0.31 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) over the next decade.

In current budget discussions, the proposal is to reach an ODA of 0.39 per cent of GDP over the next year or two.

“Our target is 0.5 per cent in five years and the hope, and our strong commitment, is to reach 0.7 per cent of GDP in ODA in 10 years or so,” says Daniel Maitre, the deputy head of the cabinet – a small group of advisors – of M Pierre-André Wiltzer, the deputy foreign minister in charge of development co-operation and Francophone relations.

If France reaches 0.7 per cent in ODA it will be in line with what the United Nations recommends that developed countries should provide in aid to developing nations. America’s ODA is now about 0.11 per cent of its GDP.

However, any immediate increase in France’s economic aid will not be heading to this region, concedes Maitre. The immediate focus is on Africa and the new economic development programme (NEPAD) being promoted by the continent to lift itself out of poverty.

“While Africa is high on our agenda… we will not stop assistance to countries outside Africa, including the Caribbean,” says Maitre. “We have an interest in the Caribbean because France is part of the Caribbean. We have to have a real regional view of development.”

Yet Bernard Giuleri, the assistant director of the Department for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean in the foreign ministry admits that despite what intellectually seems like a clear-cut French policy, there has been “no structured political dialogue” with the Caribbean.

But, adds another French official: “It is true that we have not pulled together a structured policy towards the Caribbean, although that is beginning to emerge. But it is also up to the region to engage France in a structured way.”