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President Macron in the EU Parliament in Strasbourg, January 19, 2022: "This is a European moment"
Photo: Jean-Francois Badias/AP
The last time France held the EU Council Presidency, more than 13 years ago, Emmanuel Macron was thirty years old, a young Rothschild banker and the French President was Nicolas Sarkozy. At the time, the conservative head of state gained in stature as a result of the task, as »Le Monde« describes it today. Through him, Europe suddenly seemed to have the phone number that the United States in particular had always been looking for. Sarkozy mediated in the Georgia crisis, in the financial crisis, constantly traveling back and forth. For six months, his country stood where it had always liked to be: at the center of international events.
Emmanuel Macron has efficiently presented his major reform proposals for Europe in recent years even without such a function. Still, it must have seemed like a stroke of luck that his first term ended with France's EU presidency, which began on January 1 and lasts until the end of June. It now coincides with the French presidential elections on April 10th and 24th. With the exception of the convinced European Macron, not everyone found this ideal. The opposition accuses the President of using Europe as an election campaign platform, which he naturally denies, knowing full well that he cuts an excellent figure on this stage.
In fact, the overlap in time poses a risk: if all goes well, Macron will be president again on April 25. But if a lot goes wrong, someone else takes over, or someone else. Macron's most promising competitors are right-wing populist Marine Le Pen and Valérie Pécresse from the conservative Républicains. Either she or he would then have to complete the presidency. Intensive preparations are already being made in the Pécresse camp, as she recently announced.
This Tuesday, however, Emmanuel Macron, who has still not declared himself a candidate, does not want to know anything about the election campaign.
In his speech at the start, he wanted to win the confidence of the MPs for the many European projects in the coming months, says an Élysée advisor: "This is a European moment and we want it to be perceived as such." What will be difficult.
»We belong to this generation that has to discover that the rule of law and democratic values are being called into question again«
Emmanuel Macron,
French President
It is 11:33 a.m. when Macron, who is still president and is not yet a candidate, enters the semicircle of the European Parliament and walks to a European-blue lectern in the middle. He then speaks for 30 minutes. It is not a second Sorbonne speech like the one in which he presented his major reform ideas for Europe in September 2017. And also no lecture supported by pathos. It's going to be a rather thoughtful half hour. Macron talks at length about the European values of democracy, peace and progress, but above all he seems genuinely concerned. “The shocks we are currently experiencing have shaken these values,” he says.
He will later say that he, who was born in 1977, grew up in a Europe that was an "untouchable matter of course" and a guarantor of peace anyway.
The doubts about the European construction came much later.
"But now we belong to this generation that has to discover that the rule of law and democratic values are being called into question again." Answers to this will have to be found, and not only in the coming months.
Melee scenes in the EU Parliament
Macron is also worried about Russia. In view of the current threats, he proposes a new security order for Europe, the continent needs “strategic rearmament as a power of peace and balance”. For the first time there was long applause in the hall when the President proposed anchoring the right to abortion in the Charter of Fundamental European Rights, thereby positioning himself against the newly elected Speaker of Parliament Roberta Metsola, a staunch opponent of abortion. He also wants the protection of the environment to be included in the charter.
After a good half hour, the »European moment« comes to an abrupt end. And it's going to be very national. One of the unusual images of this day is that the President now has to be verbally abused by the opposition. From the Green presidential candidate Yannick Jadot, who accuses him of going down in history as the »president of inaction on climate change«. From Jordan Bardella, the leader of the Rassemblement National, who hurls at him that the only thing that will remain of Macron is his cynicism, which makes the French people so sad. And from the left, Manon Aubry, who accuses him of being a "president of contempt."
Such hand-to-hand combat scenes are not part of French political life, and the president does not have to justify himself in parliament like German chancellors do.
But the hard start to the election campaign is now taking place on European terrain.
Macron calmly counters the allegations.
He doesn't see the French as sad, he replies to the right-wing populist Bardella, but if Bardella were, he would of course be sorry.
Macron's European strategy could work a second time - for lack of competition
Emmanuel Macron could have asked for the French presidency to be postponed, but he didn't. Probably also because he wants to prove once again that, despite everything, you can still win elections with Europe. This strategy worked in 2017, but five years later it seems more difficult. Marine Le Pen and the leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon no longer want to leave the EU or abolish the euro. Nevertheless, they have not become convinced Europeans.
In a radio interview on France Inter that morning, Marine Le Pen said she wanted to put the French constitution before European law as president.
Your right-wing competitor Éric Zemmour rails against supposed failures in the EU whenever he can.
And even the conservative Valérie Pécresse manages time and again to pack dull anti-European populism into her tweets during this election campaign.
When the government hung a large European flag under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris on January 1, it asked the President to remove it immediately.
"We owe it to our soldiers who shed their blood for the French tricolor."
In this respect, Macron's European strategy could work a second time, for lack of other convinced Europeans among the competition.