Institutions are not for ever, after all.
IN 2017 EMMANUEL MACRON took to the stage under the domed
amphitheatre of the Sorbonne in Paris to call for a more “sovereign”,
autonomous Europe. Filled with as many abstract nouns as policy ideas, the
speech came to mark the French president’s ambition for the European Union to toughen up, and stand on its own two feet. Seven years later, on April 25th, Mr Macron returned to the university with an altogether graver message: “Our Europe is mortal; it can die”.
The underlying thread in Mr Macron’s long speech was one of Europe’s
fragility in a darker world. He referred at times to the European project, narrowly defined as the 27 members of the European Union. Its residents have over the decades come to assume that the EU is a fixed feature of the landscape; Mr Macron stressed that it is instead a construct that could, through the resurgence of nationalism, be undone. But he also spoke of Europe as a broader shared liberal-democratic space, “from Lisbon to Odessa”, a firm nod to the inclusion of war-battered Ukraine.
Where Mr Macron has in the past often sounded an upbeat note, evoking
European dreams and a brighter future, this time he sounded decidedly solemn,
bordering on the apocalyptic. Nothing less than the future of European civilisation, he declared, was at risk, if decisions were not taken now to prepare the next five to ten years. Europe faces threats to its security (Russia), its prosperity (from, among other things, American and Chinese protectionism and industrial subsidies), and its humanist values (from the spread of online hate and the rise of nationalism).
As ever, Mr Macron supplied no shortage of ideas in order to face up to such threats. His included the familiar, such as an offer to discuss the European dimension to France’s nuclear deterrent. Others were fresh, including a call to double the EU budget, which will infuriate his neighbours, notably Germany, as will his call for “European preference” in defence procurement—although Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, posted an unusually warm message about the speech overall. Mr Macron also wants big hikes in public spending to keep Europe in the tech race when it comes to artificial intelligence, quantum computing, space, biotech and innovative energy
In a practical sense Mr Macron used the speech to set out an agenda for Europe’s institutions, which will be renewed for five years after elections to the European Parliament in June this year and the appointment of a new European Commission.
Indeed, the president’s detractors denounced the speech as flagrant electioneering, at a time when his centrist political party, Renaissance, is in trouble. It is trailing Marine Le Pen’s hard-right National Rally by about 13 percentage points. Yet, in the gravity of Mr Macron’s words and the depth of his furrowed brow, there was a sense that this was about his legacy, and about political mortality too. Europe lies at the heart of his political project, and has done so since he first ran for election in 2017. It is a matter on which he—along with the pandemic and Russian aggression can claim to have left a mark, helping to get the continent to act more boldly.
The 46-year-old leader cannot run for a third consecutive term at the next presidential election, in 2027. The really worrying question is about who will follow him. Mr Macron said that Europe can die. A Le Pen presidency could be the executioner. ■
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