The State of the European Union. The European Parliament faces its most important elections yet

THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION 34 closely linked, and that the EU has the scope to intervene on most matters associated with glo- balisation. And they are almost the only players on the French political chessboard who carry that conviction so strongly. In any case, this was one of the strongest de- fining characteristics of Emmanuel Macron’s pro- gramme in 2017. For him, it is mainly a matter of winning back the credibility France has lost on the European scene, particularly when compared to Germany. To achieve this, he sees it as essential to reduce the French public deficit and show that France is capable of going ahead with big struc- tural reforms. As some observers have quite rightly written, Emmanuel Macron wants to be, for France, what Schröder and Merkel have suc- cessively been for Germany, rolled into one, transforming the national model of society and production and consolidating the public ac- counts. 2 The gamble was that, by moving for- ward in this direction (it must be remembered that at the time Schröder carried out his reforms at the price of a public deficit of 3%), the Franco- German partnership would be able to find its way back to the path of active cooperation and positive leadership in the European Union in gen- eral, and the economic and monetary union in particular. The young President of the Republic naturally expected something in return, specifi- cally being able to pursue the reform of the eu- rozone and provide it with its own budget. Disappointing European achievements These first forays into Europe looked promising. Not only were there words – most notably the 2  Martin, P., Pisani-Ferry, J.: “Ce que la politique économ- ique de Macron doit faire pour les classes populaires et les classes moyennes”, Le Monde , 1 November 2017. speeches at the Sorbonne and at Pnyx in Athens 3 – there was action too. Within a few months, Macron had obtained an agreement considered almost unattainable a few months earlier on the thorny issue of posted workers. In the eyes of France’s European partners, and further afield in the Western world, Emmanuel Macron ap- peared to be the “future leader of Europe”, as illustrated on the cover of The Economist . Many saw in him charisma, vision and popu- larity. But this favourable situation was also the result of a progressively deteriorating European context: the weakening of Angela Merkel in Germany, particularly following the “migrant crisis”; the Brexit crisis in the United Kingdom; the coming to power in Italy of an ill-matched majority of populists from the extreme left and the extreme right, and so on. That made leader- ship a clear vacancy that seemed to be within very easy reach but at the same time more dif- ficult to exercise considering the rising national- ist and populist passions in several member States. In fact, within 18 months Emmanuel Macron’s European programme has been large- ly left in tatters. There are many reasons why it has proved so fragile. The first undoubtedly lies in the fact that, for a long time, Paris was with- out a solid, stable partner across the Rhine, where there were problems in building the new governing coalition. The second is that the same partner has proved to be particularly reluctant to make concessions. It took months to get Angela Merkel to make a timid commitment on 3  The full versions of the Sorbonne and Pnyx speeches are available at: https://www.elysee.fr/emmanuel-macron/ 2017/09/26/president-macron-gives-speech-on-new-initia tive-for-europe.en and, in French, at https://www.elysee.fr/ emmanuel-macron/2017/09/08/discours-du-president-de- la-republique-emmanuel-macron-a-la-pnyx-athenes-le- jeudi-7-septembre-2017