Pedro González
Journalist
At least French President Emmanuel Macron cannot be accused of lacking ambition. From January 1 and for six months, France assumes the rotating presidency of the European Council, with a program that can be summarized as “achieving a Europe that is powerful in the world, fully sovereign, free to adopt the policy it deems most convenient and master of its destiny”. Such is the goal, for the achievement of which Macron has arranged no less than four hundred ministerial meetings and meetings of common institutions and bodies of the Twenty-Seven, throughout this first semester. The aim is that, when France passes the baton to the Czech Republic on July 1, the EU will have consolidated its position as a major power in the struggle that the United States, China and Russia are currently waging in global geopolitics.
The obstacles that could prevent this are many and far-reaching. Firstly, the behavior of the Covid-19 pandemic and the spread of the Omicron variant, whose brutal rate of contagion, although much less lethal than in the first waves, is upsetting many of the stabilization and recovery plans of European governments.
Of special relevance is the course taken by the EU and NATO on the one hand, and Russia on the other, with respect to Ukraine, a scenario in which a decisive battle is being fought to preserve Kiev’s independence and sovereignty to decide its own destiny, and Russia’s evident desire to re-establish a new version of its empire over Eastern Europe. Losing it would be a huge blow not only for Ukraine itself and its neighbors, the emancipated Baltic republics and Poland, and would certify the reduction of the EU to the undesirable role of mere spectator of what is happening not only in the world as a whole but also, what is more serious, in its most immediate area of influence.
A crucial presidential election
And, in accordance with the democratic rules governing this great area of freedom and democracy that is the European Union, France itself will be subjected to the tensions of a crucial presidential election. The development of the two major issues mentioned above may have a decisive influence on what French voters express. As of today, the left and the extreme left have a bleak outlook, a panorama that is reflected in their increasingly ostensible division and in the multiplication of candidacies, whose only raison d’être is that the veteran socialist, communist and other ultra-left populist leaders are trying to gain a place in the sun.
Fortunately, the far-right, fragmented this time between the followers of the veteran Marine Le Pen and the rising star of populism, Eric Zemmour, does not seem to have much chance of winning the Elysée Palace.
All this leaves the contest probably reduced to a final between Macron himself and the new leader of the neo-Googullist right Valérie Pécresse, who has already accumulated a lot of experience as former minister of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, but above all as successful president of the Ile de France region, the most prosperous and buoyant of the country, which includes Paris and its peripheral departments.
If, as is foreseeable in view of this scenario, Macron wins again or France enthrones its first woman as president of the country, France’s European vocation will remain intact and even more accentuated if possible.
If a surprise were to occur and the left, supported by the extreme left, were to win a victory that is today completely out of place, the change could be dramatic. An example of this is what happened at zero hours on January 1st. The Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, the latter for the first time in history, since it always bore the French flag, were draped with the European flag, blue and with the twelve stars, a decision which was not to the liking of the extreme left, and which was also severely criticized by the extreme right. They will have to swallow two cups of that broth, since the gesture of spreading the European flag on the most emblematic monuments of France will be extended throughout the country during the first half of January and even beyond.
Unwavering support from Germany
Macron has in his project the support of the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who in turn simultaneously chairs the G-7 forum, the richest and most developed powers in the world, still excluding China and Russia, which was suspended after annexing the Crimean peninsula by force in 2014. Scholz fully subscribes to “achieving a stronger and more sovereign Europe”, supported by his Foreign Minister, the ecologist Annalena Baerbock, who has put her anti-European veleities in the freezer in order to “fully support France’s European program”.
Other objectives, less bombastic but no less important, for this semester of the Gauls at the head of the EU are: the establishment of a minimum wage throughout the EU, the definitive regulation of digital technology, and the creation of a carbon tax, according to its environmental impact, which would be borne by products imported into Europe. And finally, last but not least, Macron wants to tackle a major reform of the Schengen Treaty, in order, he says, to “better protect our European borders”, especially in the face of migration crises, perhaps one of the most sensitive issues in any election campaign in any EU country. We are talking about new cessions of national sovereignty, therefore very big words.
To paraphrase Alfonso Guerra, it would not be a bad thing if at the end of this semester not even the mother who bore it knew Europe -for the better, of course-.
© This article was originally published in Atalayar / All rights reserved
