When Emmanuel Macron presented his vision of Europe at the Sorbonne university in Paris on Thursday, April 25, his main aim was to shape the agenda that the 27 European Union member states will set for themselves after the European elections on June 9. After all, in 2017, the same exercise had been rather successful for him, and the president hoped to repeat his performance. However, France is not the same today as it was seven years ago, and its influence on the European stage is likely to wane.
The concept of European sovereignty, which Macron had made the centerpiece of his first speech in the Parisian university's great auditorium in 2017, and which "might have seemed very French" at the time, has "imposed itself as European," said the president on Thursday. "Rarely has Europe advanced as much" as it has over the last five years, he added.
Without a doubt, Paris has played a leading role in this, as the unprecedented crises of Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine have vindicated Macron's intuitions. From the post-Covid European recovery plan to the joint purchasing of vaccines or gas; from the adoption of digital regulation to measures to defend trade; from the rehabilitation of nuclear power to the drafting of an industrial policy, the 27 EU member states have, since 2019, undertaken unprecedented initiatives that have largely echoed the "sovereign Europe" that Macron had dreamed of in 2017.
Today, he has called on Europe to be "powerful," or else it could "disappear." The return of war on the European continent, and unbridled competition from China and the US in the race for future technologies, mean that Europe needs to shift up a gear, he insisted, calling for "a paradigm shift."
Poor timing
In this context, Macron stressed, the EU's monetary, budgetary, trade and industrial policies must be radically overhauled. The proposals he has put forward are by no means a matter of consensus within the EU – many of them are not to Berlin's liking – and Paris will have to use all of its talents to ensure that they are not shelved.
The timing is not so good, as "France has experienced its best period in terms of influence," admitted a source close to the Elysée, and it will be much more difficult for it to exert influence on the next legislature, as it has done over the past five years.
Within the EU institutions, Paris will not be in a position of strength, far from it. At the Council table, for example, which brings together the 27 European national leaders, the conservatives of the European People's Party (EPP) have been on the rise, while the liberals of the Renew party are on the decline. Alongside Macron, just four remain today (in the Netherlands, Belgium, Slovenia and Estonia), but Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, and his Belgian counterpart, Alexander De Croo, will probably be gone in a few months' time. "There is no Europe without France and its capacity for initiative," said a diplomat, who nevertheless acknowledged that a political group's clout in the Strasbourg Parliament can be important when it comes to appointments to key positions in the Commission or the Council.
You have 39.7% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.