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

EMMANUEL MACRON: THE END OF AN EXCEPTION 35 the issue of the eurozone budget at the Meseberg meeting in June 2018, although this was an issue that the French government had set as an important condition. The Germans even withdrew their support on other measures, like the European GAFA tax, which the French government has been particularly keen to push forward, fearing that such a measure would bring commercial reprisals from a Trump admin- istration with strong protectionist tendencies. Finally, as European public opinion, under pres- sure from populist parties, has begun to be- come concerned about the migrant crisis, the plans for a European Asylum Office that the French President sketched out in his Sorbonne speech seem to be a step in the wrong direc- tion. While the CSU were making trouble from within Angela Merkel’s own majority, in Italy a multi-party coalition came to power in which Matteo Salvini’s extreme right was keen to be- gin a tug-of-war with Paris over the issue of asylum-seekers arriving by sea from Libya. This meant the European summits that followed were more about damage limitation than mov- ing forward on the road to the French President’s new Europe. Ultimately, after 20 months as President, Emmanuel Macron’s European achievements are rather thin on the ground, particularly in comparison with the lofty ambitions he set out in his electoral campaign and just after taking office. The end of the honeymoon This is disappointing enough, but since last summer 2018, the French President has also been weakened domestically. “The Benalla Affair”, involving a member of his security team discovered assaulting a demonstrator in Paris on 1 May and then impersonating a policeman, damaged the image of a head of State who un- til then had been considered quite exemplary. Instead of quickly firing the person concerned, the President’s office merely gave him an official warning and a temporary suspension. Amid the controversy provoked by the affair, Alexandre Benalla was eventually sacked, but there were still several twists and turns to the tale, to the point where some people began to speak of it in a rather exaggerated way as an “affair of State”. In any case, it cost Emmanuel several popularity points in the opinion polls. But above all it is the movement known as the “yellow vests”, who damaged his approval ratings and changed his agenda. Springing cir- cumstantially from protests against an increase in fuel prices and, in particular, their tax compo- nent (particularly the increase in the “carbon tax”) this highly atypical movement has quickly become a long-term phenomenon and has ex- tended its demands to more general issues: pur- chasing power, tax fairness and participatory democracy. Demonstrations in towns and cities and around roadblocks on major routes every Saturday since 17 November (with a truce for Christmas) have led to many public order prob- lems, violence against people and property, in- juries to police officers and demonstrators, and many arrests and prosecutions. Even at the movement’s strongest, the num- ber of protesters has never been spectacular compared to the demonstrations French society has become used to. But popular support for the movement (three out of four French people be- fore Christmas and still more than half at the be- ginning of January) quickly reached unprece- dented levels. This far-reaching popularity is undoubtedly linked, in part, to its relative lack of ideological definition: it is hard to characterise the orientation of a movement that seems to