UK Edition
Emmanuel Macron now poses a bigger risk to the EU than Brexit
Emmanuel Macron, the ardently Europhile president of France, now poses a greater threat to the future of the European Union than Brexit.
In an opinion piece published in newspapers across Europe this morning, the French president set out a vision for the EU’s future that will exacerbate deep divisions between the bloc’s western and eastern countries.
Mr Macron, as he has done previously, took aim at Brexit and the “lies” of Brexiteers, but his real target is not Britain but the Eastern European nations that joined the EU in 2004.
His call for a “European renaissance” of deeper integration is a declaration of war on the EU’s arriviste nations and a call for the creation of an elite group of richer, Western, eurozone countries that would rule Brussels and be dominated in turn by Paris and Berlin.
The threat Brexit posed to the EU has long since been neutralised by a painstakingly-created facade of unity among the EU-27 and the painful process of divorce negotiations.
But Mr Macron has stripped that veil away by calling for a “multi-speed” Europe as he seeks to distract attention from the Yellow Vest protests at home and pressure from the Eurosceptic National Rally by depicting himself as the champion of a new, reformed EU led by and for France.
May’s European Parliament elections have already been painted as a battle for the soul of Europe between pro-EU and nationalist forces.
Those battle lines have been enthusiastically embraced by the likes of Hungarian PM Viktor Orban, in the middle of a sustained and controversial poster campaign of Brussels bashing, and Italy’s Matteo Salvini.
Mr Macron has poured fuel on that combustible mix and risks a furious fightback from countries who reject his choice of “more Europe” or second class EU membership.
The French president’s vision of a “multi-speed Europe” divided into “concentric circles” will be seen in the capitals of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic as little more than a ploy to relegate them to a lower tier of the EU.
The core of richer, western EU member states pressing ahead with closer integration would be hugely influential, not least because its members would contribute the lion’s share of the EU budget. In contrast the Eastern European countries are dependent on cash from Brussels.
Orbiting this elite group would be the non-euro nations, including the non-euro western nations such as Denmark, and the poorer, less developed Eastern European countries who may not share all of Brussels’ “European values”.
Mr Macron suggests Brexit Britain could find its “true place” on a third outer ring of satellite non-EU countries with close relations to Brussels.
The idea of a multi-speed Europe is fiercely resisted by the newer Eastern EU member states, who argue that such an approach would run-roughshod over the idea of a union of equals.
EU decisions are made, in theory, on the basis of consensus among member governments. Great pains are taken to avoid public defeats of individual countries, which does limit the speed and ambition of EU legislation.
Mr Macron would take away this fig-leaf of a national brake. In his vision, some member states would be more equal than others, and France, along with Germany, would be first among equals.
His demand that countries, such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, accept mandatory migrant quotas or be booted out of the Schengen passport-free zone is extremely divisive.
Loss of Schengen would not prevent Poles or Hungarians using their free movement rights but the reimposition of border controls in the EU’s cherished Schengen area would send a powerfully symbolic message to countries already in the grip of status anxiety.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, is aware of the risk of division and describes East and West as the "two lungs" of the EU and has called for Bulgaria and Romania to join Schengen and the euro.
It may suit Mr Macron to pose as the saviour of Europe, especially given his domestic troubles, and hope it goes unnoticed that he has actually reined in his more Europhile impulses.
He makes no mention of the tricky and vital issue of eurozone reform, for example, and his call for a eurozone finance minister also appears to have been ditched.
The president may be right when he says the alternative, the status quo, is “a static Europe” condemned to a slow pace of change.
But his call for a European renaissance risks entrenching deep divisions in the bloc and plays into the hands of Eurosceptic parties across Europe ahead of May’s elections.
If that leads to the fragmentation of the traditional parties in the European Parliament, it could bring the Brussels machine to a juddering halt with chaotic consequences for the bloc.