Emmanuel Macron’s ill-timed move to assert Europe’s autonomy

At The Hague, Macron talked about a new era of ‘European sovereignty’, which he asserted is not just a French idea. His vision contains five pillars: competitiveness, industrial policy, protectionism, reciprocity and cooperation. Many of these ideas are contrary to traditional free market principles, which is the basis for most common EU policies. Throughout his speech, the focus was how to make the European economy competitive to the United States and China.

To him, “European sovereignty” means that Europe must be able to choose its own partners and shape its own destiny, rather than “a mere witness of the dramatic evolution of this world”. He further stressed that  Europeans “must strive to be rule-makers rather than rule-takers”. This is interesting as many in the world including in India believe that Europeans are in fact over-represented in most institutions of global governance.

On trade agreements currently being negotiated by the EU, he argued that sustainability must be an integral part of all of them. While tough green laws are being implemented for the EU industry, Europe must not seal agreements with countries where sustainability laws are less rigorous. He found the EU-New Zealand FTA as the gold standard for sustainability.

Eurocentrism’s Limits

Despite setbacks and drastically changed circumstances in Europe, he is continuing pursuing his theme of “strategic autonomy” of Europe. He feels that in an emerging geopolitical competition between the United States and China, Europe must pursue its strategic autonomy, possibly under French leadership.

Even during his recent China trip, both President Macron and the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen emphasised on “de-risking” rather than “de-coupling” as encouraged by the United States. In a recent interview, Macron mentioned that the major risk which Europe faces is that it “gets caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy”.

The part of the interview which has generated a lot of controversy is where he asserted that “the question Europeans need to answer … is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the US agenda and a Chinese overreaction”.

This is exactly the kind of approach about which the Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had pointed out earlier that “Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe's problems are the world's problems but the world's problems are not Europe's problems”.

US Makes A Comeback

President Macron might have noble intentions of making the EU a third pole along with Washington and Beijing in the coming decades through his narratives of strategic autonomy and European sovereignty. The Franco-German alliance has also been a main force behind the European integration project.

In the recent past, however,  many EU nations have been critical of Franco-German dealings with both Russia and China. They are also aware that without the serious US involvement, Ukraine could not have resisted the Russian aggression.

In these circumstances, president Macron’s autonomy and sovereignty agenda for an assertive Europe seems ill-timed. Some major West European countries are sympathetic with the idea but uncomfortable with the language and timing due to the war in Ukraine and Chinese military exercises around Taiwan.

The European Council president Charles Michel has confirmed that quite a few European leaders think like Macron though “wouldn't say things the same way”. But still most countries in the Baltics, Nordics and Central and Eastern Europe see the United States crucial to their security. And they have become very assertive in recent years.

Gulshan Sachdeva is Professor at the Centre for European Studies and Coordinator, Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.