There are enough people who think Emmanuel Macron is a slob. And they have very good reasons for doing so, as his European keynote speech in Strasbourg on Monday showed. However, the European Union should be glad to have such a gifted noisemaker in its ranks.
At a ceremony to mark the future of the EU, the French President unceremoniously launched the idea of a “Communauté Politique Européenne”. This “European Political Community” is a kind of second league of the European Union, in which states like Ukraine are supposed to work together in important policy areas and thus find a great European homeland. So much for the foam.
Macron’s idea isn’t new, but it’s still just as correct
The bitter message underneath is: Ukraine has no chance of rapid admission to the European Union. The accession process will take decades rather than years. Therefore, countries like Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, as well as the six Western Balkan countries, must have another way of belonging to Europe before they are really ripe for full EU membership.
Macron’s basic idea is as correct as it was five years ago, when he gave his first major European speech as president at the Sorbonne: the EU must become more independent and more efficient. It must therefore speed up decision-making processes and allow some countries to move forward together as avant-garde. She can no longer afford to wait for the last straggler to make important decisions, in case of doubt for Viktor Orbán, who always allows a lot of money to buy approval. An expansion of the EU to more than 30 states, which can hardly be brought to a common line, is therefore currently out of the question for Macron.
One might argue about whether Ukraine, on whose application for membership the EU institutions want to pass a first verdict in June, isn’t after all a special case. There is much to be said for rebuilding the war-ravaged country under close guidance from Brussels as an EU showcase state on the border with Russia. But that doesn’t change the fundamental dilemma. The EU must bring the states of Eastern and Southeastern Europe closer to itself as quickly as possible in order to remove them from Moscow’s sphere of influence. At the same time, however, it must become more capable of acting itself. Macron’s new “European community” is at least an attempt to escape the dilemma, albeit with slim prospects.
The pilgrim for the European idea
Emmanuel Macron builds on an idea of his predecessor François Mitterrand. As early as 1989, he suggested the formation of a European confederation that would even include Russia. The project ultimately failed due to resistance from the Eastern European countries, who saw it as an attempt to delay their accession to the EU. There are many indications that this will also be the case this time.
Nevertheless, Emmanuel Macron has announced that he will now take up his “pilgrim stick” to spread the word about his ideas all over Europe. For his “Political Community”. For a constitutional convention that gives the European Parliament and the Commission more powers and breaks the veto power of individual member states. The chances of success are slim, but at least one is on the way.