By delivering his vision of Europe to the Sorbonne on Thursday April 25, Emmanuel Macron had in particular in mind to guide the agenda that the Twenty-Seven will set after the European elections of June 9. After all, in 2017, the exercise was quite successful and the president hopes to repeat the experience. But the France of today is no longer that of seven years ago and its influence on the community scene should suffer as a result.
The concept of European sovereignty, which Emmanuel Macron made the heart of his first intervention in the large amphitheater of the Parisian university, in 2017, and “who could [alors] appear very French”, its “imposed in European”the head of state welcomed on Thursday. “Rarely has Europe advanced so much” than in the last five years, he added.
Unquestionably, Paris played a driving role, while the unprecedented crises of Covid-19 or the war in Ukraine validated Emmanuel Macron’s intuitions. From the post-pandemic European recovery plan to the joint purchase of vaccines or gas, from the adoption of digital regulation and commercial defense instruments to the rehabilitation of nuclear power or the outline of a policy industrial, the Twenty-Seven have, since 2019, taken new initiatives which largely echo the“Sovereign Europe” that Emmanuel Macron dreamed of in 2017.
Today, he calls on Europe to be ” powerful “otherwise she could ” disappear “. The return of war to the Old Continent and the frantic competition between China and the United States in the race for future technologies require him to move up a gear, he insists, campaigning for “a paradigm shift”.
” Bad student “
In this context, affirms Emmanuel Macron, the Union’s monetary, budgetary, commercial and industrial policies must be profoundly overhauled. The proposals he has formulated are in no way consensual within the Union – a good number of them are not to Berlin’s liking – and Paris will have to use all its talent to ensure that they are not buried.
This is bad, “France has experienced its best period in terms of influence”recognizes someone close to the Elysée, and it will be much more difficult for her to influence, as she has been able to do over the last five years, on the next legislature.
Within the community institutions, Paris will not be in a position of strength, far from it. Thus, at the Council table, which brings together the twenty-seven European heads of state and government, the conservatives of the European People’s Party (EPP) are making progress while the liberals of Renew are fewer and fewer in number. Alongside Emmanuel Macron, there are four remaining (in the Netherlands, Belgium, Slovenia and Estonia), but the Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, and his Belgian counterpart, Alexander De Croo, will probably not be there more in a few months. “There is no Europe without France and its capacity for initiative”nuance a diplomat, who nevertheless admits that the weight of the political group in Strasbourg counts for appointments to key positions in the Commission or the Council.
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