M.ith the turn of the year, France takes over the EU Council Presidency. Emmanuel Macron presented “European sovereignty” as a leitmotif. Europe should become more sovereign in 2022, whether it is health, defense, energy supply, immigration, digitization or economic relations. The French president has received applause from Germans and Italians, as the survey institute Ifop has found.
43 percent of Germans and 50 percent of Italians support European sovereignty “within the framework of a more integrated Europe”. But in France, of all places, Macron met with little approval for his project. Only 29 percent of the French support his favorite project of “European sovereignty”. 40 percent prefer a “Europe of Nations” from which national sovereignty emerges stronger. The number of those who have no opinion is particularly high in France at 31 percent. Macron’s work of persuasion, which he began with the Sorbonne speech in September 2017 on the “re-establishment of a sovereign Europe”, is obviously not (yet) fruitful. In comparison, in Italy there are only 16 percent who have no opinion, in Germany 19 percent.