The sentence pronounced by this minister has the force of evidence. “The European elections must not become a referendum for or against Macron. We must take a European angle.” Europe as a lifeline, national policy relegated to the background. What could be more natural ? The Macronist electorate is Europhile, when the head of state is weighed down by heavy unpopularity. But common sense itself is sometimes riddled with contradictions. The majority needs the institutional weight of Emmanuel Macron to place Europe at the heart of the electoral campaign. At the risk of the messenger overwriting the message. Let the regular at European Councils not fade behind “Macron”, president to be sanctioned.
It is in this ambiguous atmosphere that Emmanuel Macron called this Thursday, April 25 for the start of a “deadly” Europe, during a speech at the Sorbonne, seven years after a first expression in the same amphitheater of the university Parisian. The President of the Republic listed the successes recorded since 2017, and proposed to “respond with power, prosperity and humanism” to the challenges posed to the EU.
Spirit of the Fifth Republic or of Brussels
I am the state. Europe is me. The presidents of the Republic have the unfortunate tendency to apply the precepts of our republican monarchy to the European continent. That Emmanuel Macron can deliver his speech at the very moment when the European Parliament is holding its final session, with the vote on important texts, before the June election, appears to be a very revealing slip of the tongue. However, the spirit of the Fifth Republic is not that of Brussels or Strasbourg; in certain respects it is the opposite. And when the wind of an electoral campaign blows – this is the essential difference between Sorbonne 2 and Sorbonne 1, pronounced the day after an election and not just before – the head of state, although he defended, first appears as a pack leader. That he prefers “We” to “I” in his speech changes nothing.
This is why the figure of Jacques Delors appears divisive among the most European of French officials. He was one of the few to favor the community spirit rather than the spirit of the Fifth, to hold the presidency of the Brussels commission for a long time and to renounce the exercise of the supreme French function. And it is no coincidence that Raphaël Glucksmann, a few hours before the presidential intervention, claimed responsibility for him.
Campaign axes
This Fifth Republic, Emmanuel Macron immerses himself in it as in a cozy bed. Head of state, pack, and campaign director. For almost two hours, the President of the Republic outlined the strategic axes. Through his alarmist portrait of a “deadly” Europe likely to be relegated in the next ten years, he dramatizes the stakes of the June 9 election. Casts it as an existential vote. “We must combine Ukraine and Erasmus,” said a campaign official recently. “Show the seriousness of the moment and convey European enthusiasm.”
Of this double advice, Emmanuel Macron mainly retains the first. It depicts a Europe “in a situation of encirclement” facing major regional powers and invites Europeans to build a “European defense initiative”. Emmanuel Macron finally claims a monopoly on the European flag and consolidates his duel against the National Rally. At the conclusion of his speech, he undermines the “Yes, but” of European nationalists, a speech mixing refusal to leave the EU and euroscepticism. The other political forces are referred to a supposed “timidity” in the face of the progression of extremism, far from its own “audacity”. All invisible behind this accusation of weakness. Europe is under threat of death. Europe is us. If you want to save her, you know what you have to do on June 9. Politics is sometimes simple.