18 TheEconomistNovember 9th 2019
1W
hen emmanuel macron stepped
from his presidential plane onto the
red carpet at the airport in Shanghai on No-
vember 4th, two flags were fluttering in the
warm air: one Chinese, the other the
French tricolore. This was only to be expect-
ed for a visiting French president, whom
President Xi Jinping treated to two ban-
quets and a private dinner, in two different
cities. Yet the absence of a European Union
flag was a small visual reminder of the
scale of the diplomatic challenge Mr Mac-
ron has set himself. For the French presi-
dent went to China this week not just to
speak for France, but for Europe.
Mr Macron’s message was carefully cali-
brated. When Germany’s Chancellor Ange-
la Merkel jetted off to China in September,
she took with her a large delegation of Ger-
man chief executives. Mr Macron also flew
French businessmen with him to China,
and pushed hard for better access to Chi-
nese markets for French stuff. To make the
point, Mr Macron and Mr Xi tasted high-
end Bordeaux and morsels of French beef
together at the Shanghai trade fair.Yet the French president also went “to
show that Europe has a unified face”. He
brought with him an Irish European com-
missioner and a German minister, and in-
cluded a clutch of German business bosses
in the French delegation. In a speech on
trade, Mr Macron framed the stakes as
European, and scarcely mentioned la
France. With China ready to exploit the
slightest European division, Mr Macron
hoped to show that a common, strategic,
pan-European policy might be possible.Shaking hands, shaping time
Shortly before his China trip, Mr Macron
laid out this vision of a more “strategic”
and “sovereign” Europe in a candid inter-
view with The Economist. The conversation
took place late in the evening on October
21st at the Elysée Palace in the president’s
gilt-decorated office, the salon doré, where
Charles de Gaulle used to work. In the in-
terview, Mr Macron is as bleak about the
perils facing the continent as he is radical
about his prescriptions.
“Look at what is happening in theworld. Things that were unthinkable five
years ago,” the French president declares.
“To be wearing ourselves out over Brexit, to
have Europe finding it so difficult to move
forward, to have an American ally turning
its back on us so quickly on strategic is-
sues; nobody would have believed this pos-
sible.” Europe is on “the edge of a preci-
pice”, he says. “If we don’t wake up...there’s
a considerable risk that in the long run we
will disappear geopolitically, or at least
that we will no longer be in control of our
destiny. I believe that very deeply.”
Since the 1990s, says Mr Macron, the
European Union has progressively lost its
political purpose. Its focus on market ex-
pansion and regulation, underpinned by
the American defence guarantee, provided
an illusion of eternal stability. America’s
gradual retreat from Europe and the Middle
East, which he dates to before the election
of President Donald Trump, combined
with its new protectionism, has exposed
Europe’s vulnerability.
“But we find ourselves for the first time
with an American president who doesn’t
share our idea of the European project,” Mr
Macron notes, and whose attitude to the
risk of jihadist prisoners on the loose in
Syria is that they will “be escaping to Eu-
rope”. When Mr Trump tells the French
president that “it’s your neighbourhood,
not mine”, says Mr Macron, what he is real-A president on a mission
PARIS AND SHANGHAI
In a blunt interview, the French president spoke to The Economist about Europe’s
fragile place in a hostile worldBriefing Macron’s view of the world
For the podcast and the full transcript, go to
economist.com /macronaudio