We were overwhelmed by it. For almost two hours this Thursday, Emmanuel Macron copiously developed his vision of the challenges awaiting the EU for the years to come. Challenges (“power”, “prosperity”, “humanism”) based on an alarmist diagnosis of the state of the European Union. A particularly dark vision of the future.
“My message today is simple […] : we must be lucid about the fact that our Europe is mortal, it can die,” warned the Head of State in particular. And to continue: “It depends solely on our choices, but these choices must be made now”, because “on the horizon of the next decade, […] the risk is immense of being weakened or even relegated.” Worse still, according to Emmanuel Macron, Europe is “in a situation of encirclement” facing the great regional powers, a Europe “which no longer loves itself”.
The dramatization, again
In short, 45 days before the European elections, Emmanuel Macron dramatizes the issues. Since at least 2022, the song has been well known among Macronists. The ecologist Marie Toussaint even speaks of a “broken record”. Circumstances obviously sometimes justified it. Notably when Russia invades Ukraine on February 26, 2022, a month and a half before the first round of the presidential election, while Emmanuel Macron is not even officially a candidate for a second term yet.
The war in Ukraine changed many things in Europe. The EU was not experienced – or no longer – as a space where energy supplies, or even food supplies, are subject to concern. And in six months, if Donald Trump wins the presidential election across the Atlantic, the American umbrella could no longer protect Europe for the first time in eighty years. It’s a world change.
War, a safe haven
But the string was already the same between the two rounds of the legislative elections when, on the airport tarmac, before flying to Romania then kyiv, Emmanuel Macron appealed to voters to have a “ solid majority. “Because it is in the best interest of the Nation”, just that. Jean-Luc Mélenchon then denounced a “Trump-style sketch” to “warn against the enemy within”.
Each time a text threatens not to be voted on by a National Assembly without a majority, the refrain of the crisis is sung. Before that, at the start of the Covid-19 crisis, it was already “war” in the president’s words. A safe haven for the powers that be. Because in the middle of a war, it is well known, you don’t change horses.
Content, nonetheless
And it’s the same with these European elections. On April 2, during the launch of the Macronist campaign in Lille, the speeches were already “serious”. There was talk of an “issue that has never been so important” and, already, of a “death threat” to Europe. It was former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe who declared from the podium: “European reason is threatened with death (…) when public opinion is brutalized by anti-social networks. » The president did not say anything else.
Finally yes: Emmanuel Macron adds a concrete battle plan facing this dark future if we do not act. “Strategic concept” of “credible European defense”, European loan for the defense industry, “shock of common investments”, growth and decarbonization objectives for the ECB, Europe less naive in the face of the great powers on the commercial level, simpler single market, digital majority at 15 years old everywhere in Europe, European culture pass… And so on.
Emmanuel Macron gave a lot of food for thought for his troops, entangled in a campaign that is not taking off. Valérie Hayer, an unknown candidate, remains far behind Jordan Bardella’s National Rally, and sees the socialists led by Raphaël Glucksmann getting closer. The Macronists almost only have to roll out the president’s speech – program until June 9.
But after seven years in power, is it a relief or a burden? Because of this dark situation, he can be judged – at least partially – guilty. The oppositions do not hesitate to point this out. The Sorbonne speech “is, in essence, the actions that Mr. Macron did not have”, judges LR François-Xavier Bellamy. His vision is, moreover, no more engaging than that of the Head of State: France, he says, is “the sick country of Europe”, which “everyone is talking about in Strasbourg and Brussels” .