32 Europe The Economist April 30th 2022
Manuofthemoment
I
n politics, as on the catwalk, fashions come and go. In Europe
in the 1980s it was Britain that dazzled with its daring ideas, as
Margaret Thatcher’s stateshrinking, redtapeslashing policies
inspired numerous imitators and even more furious protest
songs. In the noughties came Germany’s turn. Sensible economic
reforms helped firms there seize the new opportunities of global
isation, the better to sell unstructured Hugo Boss suits to upward
ly mobile Russians and Chinese. Ideologically the 2020s belong to
France. Its big idées—a scepticism of free markets, an acceptance
of the state’s role in shaping everything from farming to culture,
haughty declarations of independence from America—are vintage
stuff. But like a Louis Vuitton clutch rereleased to adoring fash
ionistas, this line of thinking is once again back in vogue.
Emmanuel Macron, France’s youthful and newly reelected
president, is the eu’s man of the moment. He triumphed in part by
thumping rivals intent on derailing the European project. March
ing to his victory rally on April 24th to the tune of the European an
them was a clear signal that Mr Macron sees his realm as extend
ing beyond France. And well he might. For who else could serve as
a standardbearer for the eutoday? Britain has left. Olaf Scholz,
the newish chancellor in Berlin, is mired in an overhaul of Ger
man foreign policy (it turns out that trading suits and cars for Rus
sian gas had geopolitical consequences). Mario Draghi, Italy’s
prime minister, is respected but on his way out by next spring. Mr
Macron, by contrast, will now be around for five more years.
But it is not merely by default that Mr Macron is now Europe’s
most consequential figure. French thinking on how the club ought
to be run has steadily gained ground in recent years. Mr Macron
has long fretted that Europe might “no longer be in control of [its]
destiny” as he put it to The Economistin 2019. The eu,he argued,
had become dependent on others for too much—from its ability to
innovate to military heft and even food. In a world led by unreli
able folk like Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, that
set his nerves jangling. Europe, in Mr Macron’s jargon, needs “stra
tegic autonomy”. That pitch for greater sovereignty encompasses
everything from more defence spending to Europe coming up
with its own tech giants and much else besides.
Those (such as the British) who saw the euas merely a singlemarket were wrong, in Mr Macron’s view. Being a community in
volves deeper integration, long a French priority. Critics dismiss
his idea of strategic autonomy as vague. It has gained ground
nonetheless. The European Commission in Brussels used to block
member states from funnelling public money to “national cham
pions”. Now it is busy coordinating subsidies to battery firms and
other favoured sectors. The euis far from having its own army, but
national capitals have coordinated spending better of late, and
were doing more of it even before Mr Putin invaded Ukraine.
Two crises since the start of the decade have brought home Mr
Macron’s point. Covid19 highlighted the fragility of globalisation
and its complex supply chains for everything from paracetamol to
microchips. France pushed for pandemic recovery funds to be
raised in part by joint euborrowing—the kind of pooling of debt
that Germany had resisted for decades. The second crisis, in Uk
raine, has shown that trade can indeed create ugly dependencies.
Take energy. France, with its nuclearpower plants devised in an
earlier spurt of strategic autonomy, is far less reliant on Mr Putin
than is Germany, which built pipelines to Russia instead. And few
er people now rail against vast dollops of eumoney going to farm
ers at a time of uncertain food supplies.
“We live in a French euat the moment,” says Charles Grant of
the Centre for European Reform, a thinktank based in London.
The top of the Eurocracy, including Charles Michel at the Euro
pean Council and Ursula von der Leyen at the commission, owe
their jobs in no small part to backing from Mr Macron. His brand
of political centrism is gaining ground, too: despite Viktor Orban’s
recent victory in Hungary, other populists are getting thumped,
most recently Janez Jansa, Slovenia’s prime minister, whose party
lost an election on the same day that Mr Macron triumphed.La République en vogue
Mr Macron has plenty of ideas for reshaping Europe left over from
his first term. All French presidents have demanded that France
act like, and be recognised as, a great power; Mr Macron wants the
same for Europe. Yet he has only a national mandate, not a conti
nental one. He knows that no individual country, even France, can
call the shots in the eu. Leaders must build and nurture alliances;
Mr Macron visited all 26 of his euneighbours during his first term.
Still today none matters more than the FrancoGerman axis, Eu
rope’s traditional motor, and even a powerful France cannot rail
road the continent’s biggest country into changes that don’t suit it.
Mr Macron repeating “I told you so” will probably not be enough to
sway Mr Scholz. A confident Germany, brave enough to take the
risks inherent in chasing France’s ambitions, would help Mr Mac
ron a lot. That is still a work in progress.
Plenty within the euwill resist French grandstanding. Small
countries suspect that airy talk of coordinating spending on de
fence or technology simply means funnelling cash to big French
and German firms. Much of eastern Europe is wary of efforts to
boost European military strength independent of nato, since they
see America as the indispensable guarantor of their security.
French public finances border on the precarious. eurules de
signed to constrain deficits were rightly suspended during co
vid19. At some point they must come back—and Germany will
once again take the lead.
All that will be for another season. The political influence
needed to guide the eucomes and goes, as MrMacron well knows.
One day, his brand of thinking will again be considered passé. For
now he is the king of Europe’s political catwalk.nCharlemagne
Emmanuel Macron will push for an even more French eu