Cloud of suspicion casts long shadow over summit's host

The host of the European Summit, France's President Jacques Chirac, is entering negotiations that are crucial to the future of the European Union distracted by the shadow over his own political future.

Will the President be tried for corruption by France's High Court of Justice, as the socialist deputy Mr Arnaud Montebourg is demanding? Or will he be required to testify before judges investigating the illegal financing of French political parties in the early 1990s, when Mr Chirac was mayor of Paris?

The present scandal, one of several involving the Paris town hall, concerns contracts for the building and maintenance of lycees (secondary schools) in the Ile de France region. Between 1990 and 1996, Mr Chirac's RPR party, its centre-right allies and the Socialists and Communists are alleged to have demanded 2 per cent kickbacks - totalling 600 million francs (£70 million) - on all lycee contracts. The right kept 1.2 per cent of the bribes, but let the left-wing parties have the other 0.8 per cent.

The scandal worsened on December 1st when former Chirac aide Mr Michel Roussin was arrested and sent to prison for five nights. Mr Roussin refused to talk and was freed yesterday, but the investigation nonetheless has Mr Chirac and his advisers at the Elysee looking scared and tired. One consequence is that Mr Chirac may not be able to stand for re-election in 2002.

The Nice Summit offers something of a respite to Mr Chirac. He has said he cannot possibly explain himself to the French people while the reform of the EU's institutions and enlargement are at stake. "Jacques Chirac is in an international negotiation," the spokesman for the RPR, Mr Patrick Devedjian, said. "It is in the interest of France that he be left alone."

Elysee is to tar Mr Chirac's socialist opponents with the same brush being used against him.

Now the Figaro newspaper predicts that Mr Pierre Moscovici, a Socialist Party treasurer in the mid-1990s, is about to be officially placed under investigation. As junior minister for European Affairs, Mr Moscovici is, along with Mr Chirac, the host of the Nice Summit. One can imagine the ambiance at the French presidency meetings.