FIVE YEARS in the past, when Brexit prompted fears that the European Union would unravel, Emmanuel Macron put Europe on the coronary heart of his political identification. Supporters at his rallies enthusiastically waved the EU flag. So it was no shock that, with France in control of the rotating six-month presidency of the Council of the EU since January 1st, the French president headed on January nineteenth to the European Parliament in Strasbourg to resume his vows.
The EU, declared Mr Macron, represented democracy, progress and peace at a time when every was below risk. Confronted with rising authoritarian powers, breaches of the rule of legislation throughout the EU and the menace of warfare on its doorstep, “European civilisation” wanted to be upheld and cherished. He pleaded for a “new safety order” in Europe. Resolute Atlanticists, particularly in jap Europe, hate the concept, which they suppose undermines NATO, however it's an abiding French ardour. France had hung the EU flag alone below the Arc de Triomphe to launch the French presidency, famous the president—a call met with howls of protest by his home opponents. “I’m happy with that,” he declared.
The French opposition MEPs within the chamber, nonetheless (together with a presidential candidate, the Greens’ Yannick Jadot), did their finest to show the occasion right into a marketing campaign debate. And miffed as Mr Macron was made out to be, the train struck a distinctly home word. For the president, anticipated shortly to substantiate that he's operating for re-election, is hoping as soon as once more to make use of Europe as a political soccer.
In some respects, solely a courageous politician seeks to place Europe on the forefront of a French electoral marketing campaign. The nation could also be co-architect of the post-war undertaking, however in 2005 the French voted in a referendum in opposition to a draft EU structure. In 2017 48% of the first-round vote on the presidential election went to candidates, such because the nationalist Marine Le Pen, who're Europhobic or Eurosceptic. Final yr a ballot discovered that solely 53% of the French had been optimistic in regards to the EU, in contrast with 67% of Germans.
France is break up over Europe. Hostility to the EU characterises the political extremes. This contains the unconventional left, whose candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, is healthier positioned than another on the left. And it marks the exhausting proper, together with Ms Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, a polemicist operating on a viscerally anti-immigration platform to “rescue France”.
In distinction, there's a broad pro-European consensus among the many mainstream candidates. It reaches from Mr Jadot and the Socialists’ Anne Hidalgo by way of Mr Macron to the Republicans’ Valérie Pécresse. This broadly displays what the French name Gaullo-Mitterrandisme: a common continuity in overseas coverage between Charles de Gaulle, on the suitable, and François Mitterrand, on the left, over the necessity for France to retain an unbiased voice, whereas remaining a Western ally, notes François Heisbourg of the Basis for Strategic Analysis. To this finish Europe is a means for France to reinforce its voice, not dilute it.
But this underlying division over Europe is much less clear now than in 2017. Mr Mélenchon now not guarantees to tear up all EU treaties, though he nonetheless needs France out of NATO. Ms Le Pen maintains that her imaginative and prescient of Europe is the “antithesis” of Mr Macron’s, and desires to tug France out of NATO’s built-in army command. However she has now dropped all speak of Frexit, and now not vows to take France out of the euro, a coverage that proved unpopular. As an alternative, by promising to guard the French structure from EU legislation, her technique is to attempt to undermine the union from inside, like her mates in Poland and Hungary.
Mr Macron’s most credible challenger, Mrs Pécresse, holds pro-European views that aren't so very completely different from his. She has needed to nod to the nationalist wing of her social gathering. She denounced the solo flying of the EU flag, and backs the concept of constructing barbed-wire partitions to funnel migrants on the EU’s exterior border to reception factors. However her underlying sympathies are with the EU as a political undertaking. In brief, no person is kind of as keen about Europe as Mr Macron. However nor are the variations fairly as stark as earlier than. ■
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