2023-12-30 06:00:00
As soon as he came to power in 2017, Emmanuel Macron led the battle to impose the idea of a “Power Europe” among the member states of the European Union. An idea both old and new. An idea initially at the heart of the European project, but which ended up being abandoned, first by Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman. Since the end of the Second World War, it is in fact the policy of “small steps” which has prevailed to build European construction. A convinced European like Michel Rocard became discouraged at the end of his life considering that “political Europe is dead”. Ultimately, for the former Prime Minister of François Mitterrand, only a Europe of rights was realistic. This shows that Emmanuel Macron’s positions in 2017 stood out both in the Parisian and Brussels debates.
Since then, History has caught up with the European Union: the covid health crisis, international tensions between the two big countries of the United States and China, Russia’s war once morest Ukraine, and finally, the energy crisis. While this week we learned of the deaths of Jacques Delors and Wolfgang Schäuble, two figures of a European construction of the market and rigor, the challenges facing the EU today are immense and require an overhaul major part of the said European construction.
Just fifteen years ago, in December 2008, in the midst of the international financial crisis, Jacques Delors had also given on this subject an enlightening interview has The Tribune : “I think historians will say that the great success of Europe was the successive enlargements. Imagine that we closed our doors to the democracies that were reborn in Spain, Portugal and Greece and to the countries that were emerging from the night of communism…”, declared the former president of the European Commission. And yet, he added: “We expanded, we should have given more room for deepening. But to do this, it was necessary to accept an idea which has never encountered many defenders: that of differentiation. » Ah, here is the idea of a “Europe à la carte” so dear to France. This position was hardly heard by the other member states.
In this same interview, Delors proposed a “energy community which would have allowed us to have more cooperation and integration within”while wishing “a common attitude towards the outside world”. A precursor, he underlined: “As a European, it pains me to see everyone playing beggar to Putin and Medvedev. But moving forward with 27 in bold areas, frankly, is not possible, it is not realistic. »
Precisely, this dream of a “powerful Europe” and a “Europe à la carte” has hit hard reality once more in recent weeks. Divided on the energy, geopolitical and military fronts, Europeans are today particularly uncomfortable with Ukraine, which made an official request for membership in the EU in February 2022. . If the European Council ended up supporting this approach at the end of the year by finally opening accession negotiations, it is because Viktor Orban, the Hungarian Prime Minister, opposed to such a project, left the room at moment of the vote, avoiding vetoing the decision supported by the twenty-six other European heads of state and government. On the other hand, he blocked the adoption of financial support for kyiv of 50 billion euros by 2027.
As a result, if this opening of negotiations is symbolic, it is still fraught with pitfalls because all future decisions will have to be taken unanimously. Recall that currently, seven states are officially candidates for EU membership: Turkey, Montenegro, Serbia, Albania, North Macedonia and, since June 23, 2022, Ukraine and Moldova .
But beyond this question of a new enlargement to the East (and all its implications vis-à-vis Russia in particular), Europeans have appeared in recent months divided on the front of the transport industry. Defense. More than ever, most Member States are moving forward without consultation, and by purchasing ever more weapons from the United States, at the very moment when the Biden administration is starting to make Europe understand that it would be good to increase its participation in the NATO budget. But as Delors explained fifteen years ago, it is also on the energy front that Europeans remain deeply and lastingly divided.
Thus, it is also on the front of European economic policy that there remains a very long way to go, in particular to realize the idea dear to Emmanuel Macron of a “European sovereignty”. Although the discourse in Brussels on European industry has apparently changed, the work to be done in this area remains immense. The rise in rates and inflation might lead some to return to a restrictive budgetary policy such as Wolfgang Schäuble, the former German finance minister and herald of ordoliberalism, imposed on the whole of Europe following 2010, and in particular to Greece.
However, the United States has demonstrated with the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act) that massive re-industrialization requires massive public support and protectionist measures. Here once more, Emmanuel Macron tried to convince his European partners following the Covid crisis. In December 2021, the French president proposed to “rethink the budgetary framework” European Union of the Maastricht agreements, and “recognize the need for new investments”. At the time, he warned with these strong words: “We want a Europe that creates jobs. If it is the Europe of unemployment, it will be the Europe of war” Certainly, some progress has been made in the field, but the urgency requires that the tables be turned further.
Marc Endeweld
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