A funny European semester

It is a question of chairing the Council of Ministers of the EU, and not the Union as such. Concretely, this means having genuine leeway to set the agenda for the next six months. And all those who know a little bit of institutional life, at regional, national or European level, know that keeping the agenda is essential in order to move forward on issues deemed to be priorities.

But the strength of this semester doesn’t go much further, no need to feed pretenses. Especially since this coming semester will be conditioned by two major events which will constrain its exercise. The pandemic, the management of which remains largely national. And the presidential election, which is rarely played out on international issues. Wrongly, when we know the considerable weight (50% of the time?) That Europe and major international issues occupy in the agenda of a President of the Republic.

Europe is not, moreover, a strictly speaking international affair. This is the ambiguity. It is a supranational decision-making level that commits us and has implications for the life of our economy, of our society. Of our currency. It’s a layer of millefeuille, in a way.

With, in the French case, a quirk that complicates things: an atavistic tendency to self-referentiality. To put it more simply, a chronic (and, by force, disabling) difficulty in speaking other languages, in modestly observing other ways of functioning, of thinking, of acting. However, in order to influence Europe, you have to know your partners well.

What future investments?

All this, President Macron knows because it is precisely on this bet, an assumed vision of France’s European commitment, that he conquered the Elysee Palace in 2017. Have his opponents changed on the subject? On the far right, no one is talking about leaving the euro anymore. It was a decisive error. The strategy has changed, it aims, through pan-European alliances, to shatter the edifice through its legal facade. But on the right and on the left, in the old government parties?

The European taboo remains. Michel Barnier’s sterile about-face bears witness to this. This taboo is all the more striking when one reads the coalition agreement of the new German government, in which the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Liberals, all openly assume a real European commitment. To the point of writing, in black and white, that the government define German interests in the light of European interests. Who will dare to say the same during the campaign?

The funny half-year of the French presidency is therefore not only dependent on the pandemic or the electoral calendar. It is of our political culture. However, crucial negotiations have already started on the concept of European sovereignty. On defense, industry, digital. On the reform of the criteria of the stability pact (the famous Maastricht criteria), currently suspended. Emmanuel Macron and Mario Draghi have put forward a proposal in recent days for more leeway, to make the investment the first of the criteria. This is a major issue for the French presidency, which can benefit from a better disposition of key partners, in particular the Netherlands and Germany, on this subject. Let’s talk about it !

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