During Donald Trump’s first term as president, Emmanuel Macron called for European strategic autonomy from the United States. The declaration, driven by Macron’s Gaullist instincts and Europeanist inclinations, now appears prescient. But does it herald a new age of French power in European politics?
Europe had been lacking serious leadership since Angela Merkel stood down as German chancellor in 2021. Under the Social Democrat-led coalition of Olaf Scholz, Germany was unwilling to acknowledge the realities of the current moment, including Europe’s vassalage to the US, and its own struggle with deindustrialisation, high energy costs and a faltering automotive industry. Just weeks ago, Friedrich Merz, the likely incoming Christian Democrat chancellor, was arguing for closer alignment with the US. He now talks of European independence—and last week set an example on defence, agreeing with the Social Democrats a plan to turbocharge spending—but his critics note that he has made no adjustments for a world without cheap gas.
France is well placed to take on the mantle of European leadership. It is less beholden to other states for energy than Germany, getting 85 per cent of its electricity from its nuclear power stations and selling electricity to its neighbours. It imports 20 per cent less gas and oil than Germany, 25 per cent less than Spain and 30 per cent less than Italy. While some states have replaced their dependency on Russia gas and coal with suppliers in Scandinavia, North Africa and Kazakhstan, Germany has partially replaced its dependency on Russian piped gas with dependency on American LNG.
France’s legacy of Gaullism means that many of its representatives view the US with a greater air of suspicion than the Germans. Dominique De Villepin, who presciently argued in a 2003 UN speech that the use of force in Iraq should be “a last resort”, is currently the most popular French politician and is eyeing a presidential run. De Villepin, a near lone French conservative in defending the Palestinians, has also argued for months that the Europeans would need to come together to prevent being left out during Ukraine peace negotiations. Polling shows the French public shares his fears of European exclusion.
Macron now sees an opportunity to reposition France as the military leader of Europe, even though it is withdrawing from the Sahel and is being expelled or withdrawn from Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic and Chad. With France the only European nation with an independent nuclear deterrent, Macron has offered to park jets carrying nuclear missiles in Germany to bring more of Europe under the French nuclear umbrella. Speaking at a meeting of European leaders last week, he called Russia an “imperial power”. In a broadcast to the French public, he warned that Russian aggression “knows no bounds”.
The German election raised the possibility of a reinvigorated Franco-German alliance—Macron clashed with the outgoing chancellor Scholz over Macron’s bellicosity and Scholz’s caution on Ukraine. By contrast, reports from a recent emergency meeting between Macron and Merz suggest they can work together. There is an affinity between the pair in their approaches to government—including in how to appease the far right: just as Macron introduced an immigration bill lauded by Marine Le Pen as an “ideological victory”, Merz chose to rely on Alternative for Germany (AfD) votes in a failed attempt to pass an immigration bill. He has since said he would not enter a coalition with the party, but he has a history of extending a hand to them, withdrawing it due to a backlash, only to try again later.
If Macron secures greater influence for France in the EU, he will try to reshape the bloc in his image. This may involve a replication of the neoliberal agenda he pursued in France, with a view to creating a more “competitive” Europe. For example, the French government has suggested it intends to junk EU climate and human rights legislation that it previously championed and was the chief force lobbying the EU to scrap the social and human rights aspects of its AI legislation.
The backlash against this agenda of deregulation and privatisation in France, notably with the Gilets Jaunes and the movement against pension reform, has left Macron deeply unpopular at home. But ironically, that will allow him to look to Europe. Macron tends to go abroad during a domestic crisis, before returning to try and pacify it as the anger dies down. His government is currently very unpopular and lacking a majority, forced to accommodate demands from left and right, but on the international stage he can be seen to get things done.
Macron cannot run for a third term and it is plausible that a candidate from the centre won’t make the second round of the next election, in two years’ time. Not long ago, this might have caused French influence to fade: after the Chirac government ratified a European constitution that had been rejected by the French public 20 years ago, Euroscepticism was turbocharged on the left and the right. But two decades later, the dreams of Frexit are dead. The far right and the populist left speak of disobeying the treaties or rewriting them, but they’ve abandoned threats to take France out of the union. Instead, all factions are thinking of the ways that they might lead the EU themselves.
Macron could well be followed by Marine Le Pen, though Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leftist leader of France Unbowed, also stands a chance: in the 2022 presidential election he came within 1 per cent of Le Pen and within 5 per cent of Macron. The far right gained the most votes at the legislative elections, and Le Pen and her protégé Jordan Bardella top the list of candidates that the public wishes to see run at the next election. If Le Pen won, France would try to harden European national borders; though, in perhaps what would be a bigger shock to the status quo, Le Pen is still sceptical of Nato. Despite Macron’s strong words now, rapprochement with Russia may be more likely under France’s probable next president.
