"Coordination. This is the key word that Emmanuel Macron is trying to impose on European and international scenes plagued by the coronavirus pandemic. A position "in the DNA of the president's political approach", notes the Elysée, which finds an opportunity to push its pro-European and multilateralist line. A "battle", too, far from being won.
Facing the head of state, Donald Trump, unilaterally decreeing the closure of the American borders to travelers from the EU. "This is not the division that will respond to what is today a global crisis," said Macron, before proposing, Friday, during an exchange with his American counterpart, the organization of a G7 leaders meeting by videoconference to coordinate their action on health, economic, financial and research aspects. Appointment is made Monday.
“We are here in a deeply paradoxical situation, observes LREM MEP Bernard Guetta. On the one hand, Trump is the greatest danger to the global economy in the Coronavirus crisis. On the other hand, it scares European leaders so much that it leads them to close ranks. "
"The whole challenge is to avoid nationalist withdrawal"
Or ... Because they are accused of reacting in a dispersed order, the EU is unable to coordinate its response. It is only to see the almost total closings of borders taken "in a haphazard manner" - according to the Elysee - by the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria or Hungary. "On subjects like these, the reflex is to make quick decisions, without talking to others, or even against the neighbor," laments one in Paris.
In response, Macron proposes to the EU to set up in the coming days reinforced border control measures around the Schengen area, or even to close them for risk areas. "The whole issue is to avoid nationalist withdrawal," decrypts the deputy LREM Pieyre-Alexandre Anglade.
The urgency is also to try to curb the impact of the pandemic on the European economy. “The message that needs to get across to markets and economic players is that Europe is not going to let an economic crisis add to the health crisis. Trust is very important, "analyzes Pieyre-Alexandre Anglade, recalling that" during the 2008 crisis, Europeans had taken months to get along. " Here again, Paris insists on the need to say with one voice, that "the necessary will be done".
It is obviously a sign that Angela Merkel is saying for the first time that she is ready to abandon the sacrosanct rule of zero budget deficit in Germany. Same flexibility displayed in Brussels. "For a measure to work, it must be coordinated at European level," insists the President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
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It remains, recalls Bernard Guetta, that "in the EU, nothing is done in a day, because the institutions are slow to move". Emmanuel Macron, who is struggling to advance in the “refoundation” of the EU which he has been calling for since the start of the five-year term, knows this only too well. What if the coronavirus changed the game? "Everyone understands that if there is not a fast, massive enterprise, of solidarity rescue of our economies, we run to disaster, so things will move, believes Bernard Guetta. Will they move enough and fast enough? There there is a question mark. "
VIDEO. Coronavirus: Lagarde evokes a “significant impact” on the economy
