[ad_1]
“It simply came to our notice then. “We turned the European Union into a global giant, capable of competing in a world of giants like China and the United States.” Will French President Emanuel Macron be able to say this in the summer of 2027, as he analyzes his decade at the helm of France at the end of his second and final term?
Much will depend on what he refers to as “us”. “European sovereignty” is Macron’s favorite term for being a giant in a world of giants. Strategic sovereignty includes not being dependent on Russia for energy, the US for security, or China for corporate profits.
This kind of sovereignty aimed at Macron, has a European foreign and security policy strong enough to deter aggressors like Vladimir Putin, even if in the US he can be re-elected as President Donald Trump in 2024. Nor will it be fully supported to others for microchips, Artificial Intelligence, and digital platforms.
In short, it is a very long way to go from where Europe is today. Macron is currently the only European leader with the vision, ambition and experience to lead the union resolutely in this direction. However the obstacles ahead are great.
One of them was evident in Sunday’s presidential election, with high levels of both abstention and support for Marine Le Pen, his far-right nationalist rival. Macron has its virtues as well as its flaws.
I have never seen a human being with more strength, ambition, energy and self-confidence. But on the other hand he can often look arrogant, with fluctuating humor, neo-Napoleonic, and therefore leads to the wrong path many of his compatriots and other Europeans.
Macron’s “We” very often sounds like the royal “We”, which means “I”. To fit the saying of Louis XIV: “L’Europe, c’est moi”. (Europe is me!). Macron knows that Germany needs Germany as a partner to realize his vision. His first official visit after the inauguration ceremony in May will be in Berlin.
Europe will again be ruled by the Franco-German “couple”. He will find in German Chancellor Olaf Scholz a partner more willing to cooperate than Angela Merkel. Scholz has already made strengthening the European Union a central plan of his program.
Lukewarm in his rhetoric and underestimated in public, Scholz is currently experiencing a delicate situation. He is proving incapable of finding the words, tone and decisive speed of action needed to react to the biggest war in Europe since 1945. In this respect, he is diametrically opposed to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Zelensky was a very ineffective president in peacetime, but has become a brilliant wartime leader. Scholz seemed to be a first-class leader in peacetime. In the early days of the war, he appeared very decisive, introducing a new German word into English: “Zeitewende” (an epochal turning point). But since then he has always been reluctant to cut off the country’s supply of Russian oil and gas, as well as arms supplies to Ukraine.
Collaborating with Macron is a very good opportunity to achieve a strong European return to the global stage. One of the first things they need to do together is a joint visit to Zelensky in Kiev. However, in today’s 27-member EU, the Franco-German couple alone is not enough.
Thankfully, they have some great colleagues. Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, unlike Scholz, has masterfully made the transition from economic manager in peacetime to the harshest and boldest style of leadership required in wartime.
Even the Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sanchez, that of the Netherlands Mark Rutte and that of Estonia Kaja Callas, are serious partners for a wider European “We”. Europe works better and better when there are goodwill coalitions between international governments, backed by Brussels institutions.
If the British Conservative party will finally have the courage to fire Boris Johnson, the EU could also have a strategic partner across the Channel, at least on issues such as security, energy and the environment. The longest-serving EU prime minister, Hungary’s Victor Orban, is another problem.
The good news is that the authoritarian Hungarian leader is continuing to lose support in Central Europe. On the day of the French elections, Slovenia ousted another of Orban’s populist allies, Janez Jansa. And Orban desperately needs EU funds that are currently suspended from Brussels.
Macron, Scholz and his colleagues must therefore have the courage to show him exactly where he can veto further sanctions against Putin’s Russia. After the problem with the collective action faced by the newly elected French president in the European Union, he faces an even greater challenge in his country.
Even where EU policies are already European, the policy is still national. To a greater or lesser extent, all Western democracies are being shaken by the nationalist, anti-liberal, anti-centrist policies of the kind represented in France by both the far right of Le Pen and the polemicist Erik Zemmour, as well as from the extreme left of Jean-Luc Melenshon.
These 3 candidates together got 52 percent of the vote in the first round of the French presidential election. If you put together the 13.3 million people who voted for Le Pen in the second round on Sunday, the 13.7 million who abstained and the 2.2 million who threw blank ballot boxes (a form of protest voting), then you will have a much higher figure more than 18.8 million French people voted for Macron.
Macron faces parliamentary elections in June, and it is not yet clear whether his La République En Marche party can secure a comfortable majority. Meanwhile, according to opinion polls in Italy, the right-wing populist parties Fratelli d’Italia and Lega together have about 38 percent of the vote, so they can form the Italian government after the parliamentary elections.
This great dissatisfaction with the liberal center and “Europe” is the result of many causes. They include the long-term social and cultural effects of the concentrated form of globalization represented by the EU; the fact that after the global financial crisis of 2008, the rich turned out to be generally richer and the poor poorer; the subsequent economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic; and now the war in Ukraine, further raising energy prices and consequently the cost of living.
But the worst is yet to come. If domestic policy in just a few EU member states goes wrong again, Macron’s European agenda will be even more difficult to achieve. Seeing this extraordinary man, I always remember Jacque-Luis David’s heroic painting of Napoleon crossing the Alps on a white horse, with one outstretched arm pointing the way forward and up. But the reality will be more like that of an undisciplined group, walking slowly up the mountain with a host of electric cars, and the car leading the caravan will not always be a Reno./The Guardian / Bota.al
top channel
[ad_2]
Source link
