What Macron plans for Europe

What Macron plans for Europe

The French president’s EU adviser outlines what Paris wants from Brussels.

By RYM MOMTAZ 12/16/19, 12:59 PM CET Updated 12/20/19, 12:57 PM CET

https://www.politico.eu/article/emmanuel-macron-europe-plans/

Illustration by Jack Hughes for POLITICO

A little less conversation, a little more action — that’s Emmanuel Macron’s plan for Europe in 2020.

The French president has spent the past two years setting up his chess pieces. Now, with the new European Commission in office, he wants to get down to the work itself — breaking the political deadlock he says is holding back Europe on the global stage.

“The president has laid out the conceptual framework — we’re not going to do the Sorbonne speech every year,” says Clément Beaune, the president’s point man on Europe, referring to Macron’s landmark speech on Europe in 2017, in which he outlined his vision for the Continent. “We are now in the implementation phase.”

Beaune, who has advised Macron since he was economy minister in 2014, rarely speaks on the record about his boss’s plans for Europe. But in an exclusive interview for POLITICO, the soft-spoken redhead opened up about France’s ambitions for the Continent.

Macron has been laying the groundwork for France to take on a greater role in the EU since the beginning of his presidency. Since his election in 2017, he has visited 21 EU countries — some of which hadn’t received a visit from a French president in a decade — to build up a web of political alliances. The idea was to create a “strategy of influence,” says Beaune, “which means, ahead of a Commission decision, we can suggest ideas, go on a tour of capitals, make contributions, write papers with other countries.”

“Europe has to get used to wielding power itself” — Clément Beaune, Emmanuel Macron's point man on Europe

In 2019, Macron set about building up France’s influence within the European institutions: He established the Renew Europe group in the European Parliament; positioned close allies at the helm of the European Central Bank and the European Council, and masterminded Ursula von der Leyen’s nomination to the presidency of the European Commission.

It’s no surprise, then, that the new Commission’s strategic outlook largely maps Macron’s own priorities for Europe: fighting climate change and achieving carbon neutrality; introducing a European minimum wage and eurozone-wide unemployment benefits scheme; boosting the EU’s capabilities on defense; and coming up with a credible policy of security, asylum and migration.

The French president’s European ambitions are the reason he pushed so hard to bring the first phase of Brexit negotiations to a close.

“We have spent half the European Council meetings over the past two and a half years — and it’s not an exaggeration — discussing Brexit,” says Beaune. “I was struck that at the European Council in March we spent more than half a day on Brexit and two hours on Europe’s relationship with China. It’s not the right proportion.”

Beaune acknowledges that the French president’s hard-charging approach — in particular his stance on Brexit and his decision to block the opening of EU accession talks with North Macedonia and Albania — could come across as abrasive.

But that, says Beaune, is just because European officials aren’t used to Paris taking the lead after it spent a decade keeping a low-profile on the European stage. “Evidently, creating leadership also means creating friction,” says Beaune. “When the president speaks loudly, his objective isn’t to ruffle feathers.”

Asked what Macron would choose to tackle if he could just push through one reform next year, Beaune answers “migration.” The EU’s inability to find a solution to the problem is an example of its “habit of inertia and indecision” on urgent issues. France’s goal is to turn the ad hoc process used to distribute asylum seekers rescued at sea among EU countries into something more systematic.

Another key French goal is to build up so-called European power — a goal Beaune acknowledges hasn’t always gone over well in other EU capitals. “Power has been seen in Europe as a kind of woe,” he says. “Because it was a division of the Europeans, a war of Europeans against each other and a form of auto-destruction.

“Europe has to get used to wielding power itself,” he adds. “Europe is the only global bloc that doesn’t think of itself as a power or as a long-term project.”