Mercurial Macron will use void left behind to support European army

Emmanuel Macron will exploit the power vacuum left in Brussels by the departing Angela Merkel to push plans for EU military integration and a bolstered European defence.

“Macron is top dog,” said Andrew Duff, a former MEP and president of the Spinelli Group of European federalists. “Whoever succeeds Merkel will take time to get going.”

EU policymaking is driven by the French-german “engine”. Every great leap forward in EU integration has come with the backing of Paris and Berlin working in tandem.

For most of her 16 years in office, Angela Merkel, the longest-serving EU leader of the largest EU country, has been the dominant partner in the alliance and the European Council.

Now all eyes will turn to the mercurial Mr Macron, a leader who is far more fond of disruption than the cautious Mrs Merkel.

He wants eurozone reform, moves to bolster pan-eu democracy and steps forward on common foreign policy and defence, which could form the building blocks of a European army.

“He is a true successor of Valéry Giscard d’estaing. He wants French leadership in a European federal union. And unlike Giscard he looks set to get his second term,” said Mr Duff, the author of new book Britain and the Puzzle of European Union.

Giscard d’estaing, a former French president who died last year, was influential in the drafting of the doomed Constitution for Europe. It was rejected by French and Irish voters, but still informed significant parts of the later Lisbon Treaty, which created the modern EU.

Shortly after Mr Macron’s election in 2017, which saw him celebrate victory to a backdrop of EU flags and the bloc’s anthem, he delivered his Sorbonne speech on a “sovereign, united and democratic Europe”.

Progress on those ideas was slower than Mr Macron would have liked. Common EU defence research projects were agreed but have been beset by difficulties, while his eurozone reforms were ignored by the Chancellor.

There were also Franco-german tensions over Brexit, with Mr Macron advocating a tougher line rather than the negotiations favoured by Mrs

Merkel, who was determined to avoid a no deal Brexit.

But Mr Macron scored a notable victory in convincing Mrs Merkel to back the EU’S mammoth coronavirus economic stimulus package, which borrows money against the EU Budget, and bust a long-standing German taboo against common debt.

He will hope to use the billions of euros in EU funds to build support for his plan for “a Europe that protects”. He has an ally in Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, who he suggested for the post in 2019 in talks with Mrs Merkel.

Brussels sources detected the hand of Paris in her recent State of the Union speech in which she urged member states to build an EU Defence Union. France takes up the rotating presidency of the EU on Jan 1 and a joint defence summit is planned next year with Mrs von der Leyen, which is expected to push for the creation of a 5,000-strong EU rapid reaction force. Mr Macron is a man in a hurry after the frustrations of the last five years. He secured Joe Biden’s tacit support for a bolstered EU defence in crisis talks held after the Aukus row.

He has held talks with the two main candidates to replace Mrs Merkel, the centreright CDU candidate Armin Laschet and the favourite, Olaf Scholz, for the centre-left SPD.