Emmanuel Macron’s new vision of Europe
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In the European cosmos, Jupiter is primus inter pares. For now, Emmanuel Macron, who once compared himself to the king of the gods, is master of all he surveys. Jocular comparisons with Louis XIV and Napoleon aside, the still youthful French President enjoys an unusual freedom of manoeuvre. His first actions since his re-election give us a clue as to how he intends to use opportunity that fate has given him.
Last week’s call to Vladimir Putin, his first since the early days of the war, was both of practical and symbolic significance. Practical, in that Macron wanted to gauge first hand the Russian President’s state of mind; symbolic, in that he sees himself as Europe’s interlocutor and peacemaker. He was stung by the Polish Prime Minister’s jibe: “Nobody talked to Hitler.” He knows that there is pressure on him to visit Kyiv and to do more for Ukraine. But Macron believes that France has a unique relationship with Russia and a responsibility to bring it back into the European orbit. If that means supping with the devil, he is happy to bring a spoon long enough even for Putin.
On Monday, Macron chose to address the European Parliament in Strasbourg before heading to Berlin for his first foreign visit. Again, symbolism was combined with business. Europe was his watchword in the victorious campaign against Marine Le Pen, and a stronger Europe will, he hopes, be his most important legacy. Yet his strategic vision of the EU as a great power, independent of the United States, no longer fits the global situation. The Russian invasion of Ukraine caught the Franco-German “engine” on the back foot. It is NATO, not the EU, that has proved crucial, with Sweden and Finland likely to join the Alliance in a matter of weeks, while Ukraine’s application to join the Union will take many years. NATO, which Macron dismissed as “brain-dead” only three years ago, has come back to life over the past three months.
Hence his address to the European Parliament dealt primarily with such strategic questions, rather than the minutiae of economic policy or the internal tensions within the EU. Macron set out his bold new vision: a “European political community” alongside existing structures to bring states that are either unable or unwilling to join the EU into a closer relationship. “This new organisation would allow democratic European nations to find a new space for political co-operation, security, co-operation in energy, transport, investment, infrastructure, the movement of people.”
This might seem a strange time to launch an initiative that still sounds vague and embryonic. But Macron evidently hopes that the new community would offer a European home for Ukraine and other vulnerable states, such as Moldova and Georgia, that are not ready for EU membership and are otherwise likely to drift further into the Russian sphere of influence.
He also implied that the UK could be interested in joining the new community. Given the present dispute over the Northern Ireland Protocol, which threatens to escalate into a full-scale trade war, it is unlikely that Macron’s olive branch (if that is what it is) will find many takers in London. Yet the outline of his proposal is not a million miles away from the “two speed Europe” that David Cameron once espoused, or indeed the ad hoc relationships that already exist between the EU and affiliated states such as Norway and Switzerland. A future Labour government in Britain might indeed see a purpose for such a looser form of European architecture.
The fact that, as far as we know, Macron did not even bother to discuss his ideas with Boris Johnson when they spoke by phone last week suggests that the French are in no mood to be flexible with the present British government. The PM will doubtless dismiss the plan as Macron’s vanity project: too bureaucratic and bound to be seen as a Salon des Refusés. Today’s Queen’s Speech sets out a very different vision: a bonfire of regulations to enable Global Britain to flourish outside the Continental system. After all the battles over Brexit, why should the British settle for a kind of second-class EU membership?
The gulf is still unbridgeable. Macron told MEPs that it would be wrong to humiliate Putin. That, however, is precisely what the British intend to do. The problem with restoring the entente cordiale is not just the absence of cordiality between the French President and the man he reportedly sees as “a clown”. There is a fundamental difference of strategic vision between the Atlanticist and the European. These two charismatic leaders actually have something in common, but their convictions and circumstances contrive to drive them apart. We are dealing here with more than mere personal rivalry between Boris and Emmanuel. What underlies the animosity is a thousand years of history.
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