France: A confetti-empire-state losing ground?

In a new Routledge publication, European Integration and Postcolonial Sovereignty Games, Ulla Holm contributes with a chapter on France’s different institutional relations to the French Overseas and on how EU regional cooperation may end up challenging French identity as an empire.

According to Ulla Holm, an empire is defined by ‘a centre power that radiates and fades towards the periphery by construction of concentric circles’. However, the political remnants of the French empire defy this concept, with the French understandings of state, nation and ‘patrie’, and can be characterized more as a ‘confetti empire’. This is because some islands – scattered all over the four oceans - are integral parts of the French republic, while others are in between French integration and full-fleshed state sovereignty. Others again may be splitting completely away from France, as may be the case of New Caledonia.

At the same time these overseas islands are included in regional cooperation with the EU, beyond their relationship with France. This might change the geopolitical position of the islands. Will France then lose its confetti-empire status and eventually its quest for being considered an important global power?