Macron offers EU new hope
France’s ‘new boy’ qualified hit in calling for more united Europe
BRUSSELS — French President Emmanuel Macron pledged Thursday to breathe new life into a European Union stung by the departure of Britain and deeply divided over the best way to accommodate refugees
The 39-year-old Macron, who grew up in a united Europe and campaigned on an unabashedly pro-EU platform, promised to forge ahead with Germany to make a bloc soon to be composed of 27 instead of 28 nations stronger and more relevant to citizens.
Macron’s dynamism offers EU devotees new hope. He is pushing at a summit of the bloc’s leaders, his first as head of state, for joint European defence, a joint budget for countries that use the euro and a tougher stance against the U.S. and China on trade.
“Europe is not, to my mind, just an idea. It’s a project, an ambition,” Macron said.
His enthusiasm won’t be enough to make Macron’s ambition for the EU real. On the summit’s opening day, Hungary’s prime minister dismissed him as “the new boy” amid tensions over refugees.
Macron’s debut followed a series of reversals for anti-European and anti-migrant parties in elections in Austria, the Netherlands and France, and just a few months before Chancellor Angela Merkel heads to the polls in Germany.
The spectre of a far-right success in Germany, coupled with the departure of heavyweight member Britain, had undermined public confidence and fuelled doubts about whether a unified Europe matters to citizens in a world where many feel left behind by globalization.
Macron, who grew up in a globalized economy, warns that Europe will become globally and economically irrelevant if it doesn’t join forces in more spheres, such as defence, and suggests the historic force behind European integration always has been France and Germany.
“We are working hand in hand with Germany,” he said. “When France and Germany disagree, it’s rare that Europe issues advance. So we gain in time and efficiency if we get together.”
But he underlined a Franco-German partnership was “not about excluding other countries, other member states, on the contrary, it’s about defining positions together.”
Despite the new lustre leaders hope to give the European enterprise, deep divisions remain over how best to handle thousands of refugees in Greece and Italy.
Some, like Hungary and Poland, have refused to take part in a legally binding scheme to share refugees from southern Europe with other partners.
Macron said before the summit countries can’t pick what rules to obey and should face “political consequences” for not respecting ones the EU has agreed to.
“Europe is not a supermarket. Europe is a common destiny. It gets weaker when it allows its principles to be rejected.”
That didn’t go down well with some eastern EU states that have seen tens of thousands of people cross their territories over the past two years.
“The new French president is a new boy,” said Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who built a border fence to keep migrants out. “We’ll have a look at him, get to know him. There are quite a few veterans here, who have been labouring for decades.”
Macron’s “entrance was not very encouraging, because yesterday he thought that the best form of friendship was to kick the Central European countries. That’s not the norm here,” Orban said.
Germany’s Merkel supported Macron on the issue, albeit more subtly.
“This is not the day for threats,” she said, but noted the immigration matter must be discussed and that the EU was a “community of values.”