Every week, International mail explains its editorial choices and the debates they sometimes generate within the editorial staff. For this first issue of the year, we have chosen to read French policy through the prism of our European neighbors: at a time when France takes the presidency of the Council of the European Union, Emmanuel Macron is firing all wood, at the risk, sometimes, of disorienting its neighbors.
1is January, France took over the head of the Council of the European Union for six months. A role that has fallen to it in place of the United Kingdom, now outside the European Union (EU). Four months before the presidential election, in the midst of an epidemic rebound due to the Omicron variant, is this task, as suggested The Economist in the article which opens our file, a poisoned gift for the French president?
This is the question we asked ourselves. And especially that the European press arose. The great British weekly recalls that on December 9, under the gold of the Elysee, Emmanuel Macron offered an avalanche of ideas behind an enigmatic title: “Relaunch, power, membership”. Europe, he proclaimed, will finalize a common assessment of security threats, discuss new deficit and debt rules, agree on environmental clauses to be anchored to future trade agreements, launch Schengen reform, and Moreover. There will be summits on the ocean, on Africa, on a new European growth model and on the Western Balkans. Western Balkans that these commitments leave dubious to say the least, recalls the Slovenian daily Work, so much the great French declarations seem little to be translated into action.
Concerns
In fact, our European neighbors are sometimes perplexed, even worried, in the face of the great French flights. If the daily economic Today’s industry thinks Sweden would do well to take inspiration from France’s nuclear voluntarism – perhaps soon to be labeled green technology at EU level if member states agree this month – , the German press, a bit fascinated, never tires of seeing a certain obstinacy, even an obsession, nourished by the Gaullist heritage and a certain vision of France.
It is once more the German press, and in particular the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (DOES), who is worried regarding the growing French debt. For a good cause, she admits: financing of the energy transition, “energy check” and “inflation bonus” of 100 euros each intended for the most modest households… “We can hardly blame President Emmanuel Macron. Inflation is a plague for citizens, they have an appointment at the polls in April, and, according to the latest polls, the loss of purchasing power is the first concern of the French – before security, immigration and even unemployment. Any head of state would have given them a helping hand, especially following the ‘yellow vests’ movement. ” But the DOES adheres less to this policy when the French president, whose country is now getting out of hand, intends to review the budgetary rules and reform the stability pact, supported by Mario Draghi.
“Europhile zeal”
What does it matter! One thing is certain, estimates the German business daily Handelsblatt, the pilotEU is indeed France. And his primary objective, specified Emmanuel Macron on December 9, is to shape a Europe “Powerful in the world, fully sovereign, free of its choices and master of its destiny”. “Excuse the little!” ironically The Economist, for who “This rediscovered Europhile zeal also marks, unofficially, the kick-off of the campaign for his re-election”.
This zeal, this triple role assumed by Emmanuel Macron – French President, President of theEU and supposed candidate – that’s precisely what we asked Ale + Ale to illustrate on the cover of this issue. Italian cartoonists have seized on the subject by representing it as a man-orchestra blowing not only European stars but also the coronavirus, as the pandemic is present in France and elsewhere in Europe, inseparable from the policy that everyone leads.
Strategies disrupted by the appearance and the sharp rise, since the end of November, of the Omicron variant, the most contagious of the versions of Sars-CoV-2 that we have seen to date. This news, which permeates the entire beginning of the year, we have chosen to treat it through the explanations of a British virologist. (read p. 34). It sets out one of the possible scenarios for the rest of the pandemic. Omicron might indeed predict the evolution of the virus: more contagious but increasingly benign. To the point of settling permanently but more discreetly in our lives. A little difficult reading, perhaps, but which gives hope.
Happy New Year everyone.
Virginie lepetit
