Macron’s vision for a new Europe

Perhaps inevitably, French President Emmanuel Macron has become public enemy number one among the United Kingdom’s anti-European leaders and their rabidly pro-Brexit (and largely overseas owned) media backers.

Late last month in a 100-minute speech in Paris, Macron set out a series of initiatives for a future EU – they included the creation of a military intervention force, a common defence budget and new agency to curb illegal immigration.

These are measured and reasonable steps to make in the progression of the European project, broadly according to the vision of the EU’s founding fathers who saw the Treaty of Rome as the first step on the road to full European unity.

Indeed, it was also the view of the UK’s wartime leader, Winston Churchill who in a speech in Switzerland on 19 September 1946, looked forward to a “United States of Europe” as a counter to conflicts such as the one that had just ended.

In that respect the EU has been remarkably successful, presiding over a period of sustained peace within its borders.

But the time has come to move on and Macron’s roadmap is not simply timely, it is essential.

Not so according to the UK’s main European attack dog, Nigel Farage who in a comment that sounded uncannily like one of United States President Donald Trump’s tweets, claimed the EU leaders were “bad people. They treat countries like the communists did”.

Farage’s outburst comes at a time when he should be celebrating the success of his friends in Germany’s far right where the Alternative for Germany Party won enough votes in the country’s General Election to enter Parliament for the first time — a rare success after the firm rejections of similar parties in France and the Netherlands.

But it also comes at a time when his beloved Brexit is in trouble. As commentator and geopolitical specialist Colin Chapman* points out, after the British voted by a narrow majority to leave the EU (with more than a quarter of voters abstaining) little progress has been made.

“UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s weakened and divided Government has switched tactics,” Chapman writes.

“Having been prepared to walk away from the world’s strongest economic bloc (“no deal is better than a bad deal”), her position is now that Britain remains in the EU in all but name for at least two years after the official exit in early 2019.

“Britain will try to secure open access to the EU single market for UK manufacturers and services.”

Chapman says that May appears to be moving from a ‘hard’ Brexit to a ‘soft’ one, but these new tactics are not bearing results.

“May’s fragile Cabinet unity is collapsing, with Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson resisting an EU divorce payment and breaking ranks to host an event this week for a new think tank, the Institute of Free Trade, that argues for a hard Brexit,” Chapman writes.  

“And at the conclusion of Labour’s annual conference this week, the popular party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, changed his position, arguing for Britain to remain in the EU single market and customs union.

“Labour has only to gather a few Tory rebels — and there are a growing number — and the Government faces defeat in Parliament and another General Election. On current polls, Corbyn would win.”

In the face of this chaos, the last thing the Brixiteers need is a Europe with a renewed focus and an attractive vision. It is no wonder that increasing calls for a second referendum when the terms of exit are finally known is being greeted by strident, almost hysterical rebuffs from the UK Government’s Department for Exiting the European Union.  

*Colin Chapman writes for Australia Outlook, a program of the Australian Institute of International Affairs.