“She could die,” French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday. According to him, that ‘them’ is Europe. If the European Union (EU) does not move quickly, it will, Macron warned.
It was not a cheerful message that he delivered during a speech in the grand amphitheater of the University of Sorbonne. In almost two hours, he spoke in front of students, French politicians and European diplomats about the long list of weaknesses of the EU: too little investment and too much regulatory pressure stand in the way of less dependence in areas such as energy, technology and defense.
Because, Macron stated, the EU is increasingly alone in the world. According to him, the United States has two priorities: first the US itself and then the geopolitical battle with China. “The EU has no geopolitical priority for the coming years,” he was certain. ‘We must build a Europe that is not a vassal of the United States.’
About the author
Thom Canters is a general reporter for de Volkskrant.
With the elections for the European Parliament in early June, Macron does not seem to come up with this alarmist story at a random time. Although his entourage emphasized after his speech that Macron had mainly wanted to give his vision for Europe, French media also made the link with his party’s poor position in the polls. Marine Le Pen’s radical right-wing Rassemblement National seems to be heading for a big victory in early June.
European unity
The call to be less dependent on the US has been heard more often among European leaders recently. They anticipate the possibility of a new American presidency of Donald Trump. This story did not come out of the blue from Macron either. Seven years ago, at exactly the same location, the then brand new president set out his vision for the future of the European continent. Even then he identified an EU that is ‘too weak, too inefficient and too slow’. And then he also spoke about a united Europe that had to counterbalance the US and China.
“Now we’re here again,” he reflected on the past seven years on Thursday. ‘It is fair to say that the battle is far from won.’
Now it is not the case that Macron thinks that nothing has changed at all. The Green Deal, a migration agreement, cooperation in the development of a vaccine against corona – the common thread that runs through all these policy areas, according to Macron, is more European ‘unity’.
Bottom line, however, he doesn’t think it’s enough. The geopolitical rules of the game have changed: war is back on the continent, both the United States and China are favoring their own economies, and populism threatens to undermine liberal democracy.
Macron’s list of policy proposals is long. The EU must lead the world in five sectors: artificial intelligence, quantum mechanics, biotechnology and green energy. To achieve this, Europe must make massive investments. In the field of European defense, he discussed, among other things, joint financing of military purchases, possibly with European loans. Moreover, Europe needs to build more partnerships with other countries to counterbalance the US and China.
At the end of his speech, Macron explicitly addressed what he believes will be at stake in two months’ time. Both the British and the Americans will decide their future in the coming year, he reminded his audience of the upcoming US presidential elections and British parliamentary elections. “On June 9, the Europeans will do the same.”
