Financial Times FT.com

A risky choice to lead Chirac's fightback

Published: June 1 2005 03:00 | Last updated: June 1 2005 03:00

At a debate on Europelast month, Dominique de Villepin posed a rhetorical question: why did the French always imagine they would be the losers from globalisation rather than winners?

Whipping himself into a frenzy of enthusiasm, the 51-year-old interior minister and occasional poet praised France's vibrant multi-national companies and the commercial opportunities that lay in the new European Union countries in eastern Europe.

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