SAINT-RÉMY-DE-PROVENCE, France — Emmanuel Macron wants to be king and savior of Europe. But his vigorous pursuit of a sovereign EU defending its interests on the global stage with the United States, China, Russia and India has yielded few tangible gains in his first two years in power.
With German Chancellor Angela Merkel weakened by domestic strife in her twilight years in office, Britain sidelined by its civil war over Brexit, and Italy marginalized under a feuding coalition of rival populists, the French president has positioned himself as the indispensable European leader.
The golden thread that connects his muscle-flexing in Brussels and diplomatic activism on the international stage is a strategic ambition to make Paris the go-to political hub of a stronger, more united Europe, through which all the other spokes are connected.
The problem is that France, even with such a dynamic leader, doesn’t have the oomph to pull it off without a willing German partner. Not all European countries want to be led, let alone by a forceful Frenchman in the tradition of General Charles de Gaulle.
Moreover, Macron has little to show from his assiduous courting of Donald Trump, robust sparring with Vladimir Putin and critical dialogue with Xi Jinping, all of whom would rather cherry-pick a divided Europe than negotiate with a united one.
“Macron was on the ropes last winter and that sapped his influence in the EU. Now he’s back with a bang” — Veteran EU diplomat
Macron’s ability to achieve results will be tested this month when he hosts the Russian president for private talks at his Fort de Brégançon official holiday retreat before chairing a G7 summit with the leaders of the U.S., Canada, Germany, Britain, Italy and Japan in Biarritz. Trump left the last, acrimonious G7 gathering in Canada early and disowned the final communiqué.
The political and regional fragmentation of Europe, exacerbated by this year’s European Parliament election, is both a problem and an opportunity for Macron. He may not have managed to decimate the EU’s incumbent political families and build a dominant new pro-European centrist movement the way he blew up and reshaped France’s political landscape in 2017. But his Renew Europe group has emerged as a pivotal third force in the Parliament alongside the center-right European People’s Party and the center-left Socialists and Democrats.
The French leader has not shied away from aggressive tactics to call the shots in recent EU decisions with little concern for diplomatic niceties or ideological consistency. It was Macron who insisted in April that any extension of the deadline for Britain’s departure from the EU should be short, while Merkel and most other leaders were pushing for a longer delay.
It was Macron who prevented the EPP from imposing its candidate for European Commission president — Bavarian conservative Manfred Weber — and forged a compromise over the EU’s top jobs seen as stacked with allies of France.
Manfred Weber bid for the European Commission presidency was torpedoed by Macron | Christof Stache/AFP via Getty Images
It was Macron again who tilted the EU’s choice of candidate to head the International Monetary Fund away from Berlin’s favorite, Dutchman Jeroen Dijsselbloem, and toward Bulgaria’s Kristalina Georgieva. The choice was both a consolation prize for Central European countries excluded from the top EU jobs and a symbolic defeat for northern fiscal hawks who advocate austerity.
Going nowhere
As the young president has regained his domestic footing after months of a bruising grassroots Yellow Jackets revolt last winter over fuel prices, taxes and the cost of living, his authority on the European stage has waxed again. His peers now realize he will be in power at least until 2022, and quite possibly until 2027.
“National leaders’ weight in Brussels is a direct reflection of their strength and expected longevity at home,” said a veteran Brussels diplomat. “Macron was on the ropes last winter and that sapped his influence in the EU. Now he’s back with a bang.”
Deeply frustrated by Merkel’s caution and German resistance to his proposals for strengthening the eurozone and building a European defense force, Macron has become more willing to challenge Berlin than was his timid predecessor, François Hollande.
“What has shocked him most is the absence of strategic vision and long-term thinking among EU leaders,” said William Drozdiak of the Brookings Institution, author of a book on Macron on the world stage to be published next year. “His disappointment with Merkel and Germany is particularly acute.”
Macron’s ascendancy is also inhibited by his perceived inability to persuade Trump or Putin to change course on issues of concern to the EU.
Yet despite its military reach, nuclear arsenal and permanent U.N. Security Council seat, Paris does not carry the same weight in the EU as Berlin did at the height of the eurozone crisis, when Merkel was perceived as holding the fate of Southern European countries in her hands.
France’s anemic economy, chronic budget deficits, penchant for trade protectionism and pursuit of strategic autonomy from the United States make it an unattractive leader to many. That has emboldened Macron’s EU critics to form coalitions against Paris, such as the self-styled New Hanseatic League of fiscally conservative northern states led by the Netherlands fighting his proposals for a more integrated eurozone, or Central European countries in the Visegrad Group and Italy’s populists hostile to his policy on migration.
Macron’s ascendancy is also inhibited by his perceived inability to persuade Trump or Putin to change course on issues of concern to the EU. Despite the political capital invested in charming Trump, the French leader was unable to convince him to keep the United States in the Paris climate change agreement or an international deal on freezing Iran’s nuclear program, or to refrain from trade sanctions on European steel and moves to paralyze the World Trade Organization. Nor has he managed to persuade Tehran to stick to the nuclear deal despite new U.S. sanctions, or rival leaders in Libya’s civil war to cease fire and return to U.N.-led power-sharing negotiations.
Macron has repeatedly tried charming U.S. President Donald Trump — with little success | Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
French officials say at least Macron keeps trying, in the name of Europe. The French leader has called repeatedly for a “strategic partnership” between Russia and the EU. French officials say Russian cooperation is vital in a range of other flashpoints including Iran, Syria and Libya, and contend that the EU, not China, is Moscow’s natural long-term partner.
But it is not clear that Putin is willing to pay any price for warmer ties with Europe. Macron’s efforts to rebuild trust hinge on whether he can persuade the Russian leader to make concessions over Moscow’s military action in eastern Ukraine, perhaps freeing Ukrainian navy officers captured in the Kerch Strait last November and resuming talks on a ceasefire and political settlement with Ukraine under the so-called “Normandy format,” chaired by Germany and France. If he can’t prevail in such diplomatic battles, his European crown will remain shaky at best.
Paul Taylor, contributing editor at POLITICO, writes the Europe At Large column.