A sweeping speech that struggles to convince. After the president’s long speech at the Sorbonne in which he presented the long list of his ambitions for the future of the EU in order to move towards a “Europe-power”, European reactions are long overdue.
Far from the founding “Sorbonne 1” speech in September 2017, the story told by the president resembles more of an assessment of the progress made by France than a revolutionary vision of Europe. For example, the European “intervention force” of 5,000 men that Emmanuel Macron called for has actually been under discussion since the Helsinki summit in… 1999. At the end of the speech, the reactions in the various capitals remained scattered and rather lukewarm.
In the embassies, this lack of interest is justified by the feeling that this intervention was mainly intended “for the French” with “electoralist overtones” in the context of the start of the campaign. In a tweet posted on X mid-afternoon, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the French president’s speech contained “good impulses.” “France and Germany together want Europe to remain strong. (…) Together, we move Europe forward: politically and economically,” he wrote.
In his speech, the French president seems to have taken a step towards his German counterpart. Emmanuel Macron thus showed himself to be open to the idea of an anti-missile defense for Europe. “Should we need an anti-missile shield? Maybe…”, he conceded, in a change of position vis-à-vis the German European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI) project, which had aroused strong reluctance on the part of Paris.
In Brussels, however, several embassies report the “limited expectations” that this speech represented, with “less general European attention”. “There are no big surprises, it is above all the confirmation of a line that we have already started to take,” says a diplomat. Another points to “fairly traditional French positions, on industry, defense, trade, but which we doubt will be the subject of a real European consensus”.
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With Emmanuel Macron, France has in fact positioned itself as the leader of a new European policy, advocating more security and sovereignty, going against the sometimes more Atlanticist discourse of certain other Member States. The nuclear issue has long pitted her against Germany, and her stubborn speech on a new European loan does not pass muster in several northern capitals, among the so-called “frugal” countries. “Having analyzed that many things need to be changed, I think everyone can agree,” explains a European diplomat. But it is the form of the suggestions which is more subject to debate.
The most attentive spectators of the speech will, however, have noticed that, if the French president praised a Europe which was able to react and face the challenges posed to it in recent years, not once did the name of the President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, was not mentioned by the Head of State. However, she is campaigning for her own succession, even though recent information reveals new negotiations between Paris and Rome to find an alternative.