FRANCE may be in the doghouse in Europe for breaking the eurozone “Stability Pact”, and saying that it didn’t much care, into the bargain. But its relationship with the United States is not doing too badly at all.

You might have thought otherwise, of course. Of all the transatlantic relationships between European countries and the United States, that one has brought more public friction in the past few years than any, including Russia.

It is a role that each side has almost appeared to enjoy playing.

Yet there is more in common than it has generally suited each side to let on, not least France’s own exceptionalism, as displayed in its attitude to the eurozone budget rules, which some might call American in its stubborn unilateralism.

This week, in fact, the French Government has moved considerably closer to Washington’s position on Iraq, even if that is not quite how President Bush and his team might put it.

The French antipathy to America, at best ambivalence, has been generously chronicled through the centuries. But two books just published in France have attracted national attention for their charge that this is an indulgence that France cannot afford any longer.

Philippe Roger in L’Enemi américain traces the French antagonism back to its 18th- century roots, arguing that resentment of American “imperialism” crystallised a century later with the American Civil War and the American defeat of Spanish forces in 1898.

Fluent and erudite, it is controversial not so much in this analysis as in its charge that France has made use of this external enemy to hold together its own internal conflicts.

That contemporary theme is echoed by Jean-François Revel in L’Obsession anti-américaine.

He argues that French influence in international affairs has been badly damaged by France’s instinctive obduracy in resisting the American position, to the point where Washington will not listen any more.

Much of this analysis, inevitably, is inspired both by relations since the start of the Bush Administration in January 2001, and since September 11.

Certainly, Bush himself has made no secret of his irritation at those European governments that he felt did not share his aims — that is, most of them.

But things are not quite as bad as the past year’s rhetoric might imply.

The new French Government has moved adroitly to fill the gap that has been left by the explicitly anti- American election campaign of Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor.

Take this week’s debate about Iraq.

Although on the face of it, French distaste for a US-led attack has been one of the Bush Administration’s greatest obstacles in getting the support of the United Nations, we now have the outline of a deal.

Following lengthy conversations on the telephone between Colin Powell, the American Secretary of State, and Dominique de Villepin, the French Foreign Minister, the United States has moved slightly closer to the demand by the French for a “two-step” process of authorisation.

The first would cover weapons inspections, and the second, the use of military force.

But in turn, France has been prepared to harden the wording of a possible resolution on weapons inspections, to make it clear that Iraq would face consequences if it blocked the arms searches.

The French Government this week, in the first serious parliamentary debate on the stand-off over Iraq, won cross-party support for its stance that all diplomatic routes must be followed before force is used, and that any military action would have to be under the auspices of the United Nations.

No, that would not quite be the script that Bush would like the French parliament to have followed.

Yes, it was accompanied by routine gibes at America; Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the Prime Minister, described the Administration’s stance as “simplistic”.

But all the same, that is a long way from outright opposition to an attack, on any terms.

There is room for a deal, should the Administration want to persist with the United Nations course; this week, it seems, it does.

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