A quarter of a century later it remains a resonant and notorious image of European arrogance. Michel Camdessus, then the French managing director of the IMF, stands over Suharto with arms imperiously folded as the Indonesian president, head bowed, signs a humiliating and wildly excessive list of conditions in return for an emergency loan during the Asian financial crisis in 1998. Now Indonesian accusations of oppression by Europeans are being aired again, this time over Brussels’ demands that palm oil growers prove that their exports to the EU do not cause deforestation. Indonesia’s economy minister has accused the EU of “regulatory imperialism”; the Indonesian foreign ministry’s videoed annual address last year contained an image of a jackboot marked with the EU logo stamping on a palm oil plantation.
As Brussels’s attempts to manage its trading partners’ production processes proliferate — from standards on renewable fuels to deforestation to carbon emissions to plastic packaging and employment conditions — so do accusations of condescending heavy-handed coercion from those who have to comply.
The bureaucratic intrusiveness of the deforestation regulation has aroused particular resentment. The EU has made some effort towards lightening the load: last year it set up a task force with Indonesia and Malaysia on implementing the rules. But there does not seem to be much appreciation of the dark historical resonances.