Foreign Policy: Macron is dividing Europe in order to save France
The Foreign Policy posted article opinion harshly criticizing the French president’s vision for Europe future which, according to the article, would expose the European continent to trouble.
In 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron linked his grand vision of France’s role to the future of Europe.
Speaking at the Sorbonne, he lamented that Europeans concentrate all energies on our internal divisions.
The French president warned of endless disagreements over financial resources and budget constraints within the European Union.
To create a strong Europe capable of leading on the world stage, Macron proposed his solution, which is to make the European Union essentially the European Union recreated in the image of France a strategically independent bloc from the United States.
According to the Financial Times, “Fortunately for the European Union, events over the past year have deprived most of the other 26 member states of the validity and desirability of Macron’s France-centric views”.
Therefore, “Macron’s miscalculation of the actions of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his abdication of any major French role in confronting the Russian military operation in Ukraine undermined confidence in France throughout the bloc”.
In fact, the exact opposite appears to have happened.
Surrounded by groupthink about France’s role in Europe, Macron is unwilling or unable to reconsider France’s position in the EU, which has been altered by the war in Ukraine.
The latest evidence of Macron’s miscalculation is France’s renewed attempt to impose its international economic model on other EU member states, and the ostensible reason is the American inflation law.
For Macron and the French protectionists in the European Commission, this is an opportunity to impose their anti-competitive, anti-NATO impulses on the rest of the bloc.
Macron’s policies have deepened the break between France and the EU.
Today it’s clear that Macron’s vision of the so-called European strategic autonomy has been shattered and burned in Ukraine.
Instead of leading Europe into a glorious era of integration, Macron is working to widen the same divisions in Europe that he warned of in 2017.
