When Emmanuel Macron ascended to the French Presidency in 2017 he did so on the platform of introducing widespread reform across a raft of institutions, the most notable being the further integration and strengthening of the European Union. Fast forward to halfway through his second term in the Elysée Palace and Macron stands isolated in a Europe that is turning its back on the wider European project and an increasingly multipolar world that threatens to crush Europe’s ambitions and turn it into the playground of the United States or a resurgent China.
His aim of a stronger European force on the world stage may not be over yet, but time is ticking for the French President, and he knows it.
Macron has become increasingly aware of the emerging multipolar nature of geopolitics. Although the United States is arguably as powerful as it has ever been, there are resurgent forces such as China that hope to seriously challenge the USA for world dominance in the coming decades. Macron believes that to stop Europe from being crushed by the aspirations of the two superpowers, European nations must become more integrated and develop a far more unified approach to world affairs. Macron has announced wide-ranging hopes for reform within the European Union and the European community to achieve a stronger European presence on the world stage.
(Eiffel Tower by the Seine River: Photograph by Alper Yasarata)
He has been a large proponent of the controversial idea of increasing defence cooperation amongst European nations to the point he has often supported the idea of an EU armed forces, an attempt to give Europe a defence platform that exists outside of the bounds of NATO or US-led initiatives. Macron also wants Europe to meet the challenge of climate change head-on by facilitating the creation of a European climate bank that will help to transition to a carbon-neutral economy and make Europe a leading light in the fight against climate change. Macron’s proposed reforms are all with the same goal in mind, to allow Europe to develop into a serious force to be reckoned with in the next few decades, and to avoid Europe becoming a playground for the aspirations of much stronger powers such as the United States or China. His issue, however, is that the fiercest opposition to these reforms lies at home.
Macron’s fiercest opposition comes from within his own institutions and country, with the French assembly in an open tug of war between the anti-EU leftist parties and the populist (and therefore anti-EU also) far-right National Rally party. French legislative assemblies are in gridlock with no painless or swift end in sight. For Macron this means, amongst other things, that his grand plans for European and French-led initiatives aimed to achieve greater integration of European powers under the European Union may not even find legislative support within his own country. He has attempted to appeal to the French public by stating that his attempts to revamp the French economy and drag France into a new age will not work ‘without a new stage of the European project’. With support for anti-EU parties on the rise there is a real danger that this appeal has fallen short of convincing the electorate that a stronger EU is integral to a stronger France.
Elsewhere in Europe populist and anti-EU movements are on the rise, and even in countries in which they have not won significant power world leaders are attempting to hold them at bay by turning their backs on plans to strengthen the European Union and focusing far more on salient national issues. Macron has tried to appeal to these leaders to be at the vanguard of national opinion. He has called on them to be the ones shaping public opinion instead of simply reacting to it and to put the long-term interests of their country, and Europe as a whole, in front of the short-term gains afforded to them by succumbing to the desire to turn away from the European project. Whether Macron will be able to see his reforms become a reality is uncertain, but what is clear is that a Europe filled with infighting and fractured responses will be unable to establish itself on the world stage as a unified force, reducing its power and importance for decades to come.
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