In Brussels, this Thursday, everyone should stay in their role. While Emmanuel Macron will go to the European Summit, Michel Barnier will attend a meeting of the European People’s Party, not far away. “There is no problem, all this is done in good harmony,” we assure the Élysée. “There is a place (in the European Council, Editor’s note) and it is for the head of state,” we add to Matignon, just to remind us that France is not in cohabitation.
When François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac moved into cohabitation with a Prime Minister from the opposing camp, it was the executive tandem that took a seat at the Council table. This time, an unprecedented situation, neither side won and the two camps had to ally themselves in a government coalition, itself a minority. So back to square one.
“Aligned” with European Affairs
Diplomacy, including European affairs, “is part of the reserved domain” of the president, insists one of his close friends. “I don’t see the Gaullist that is Michel Barnier having another reading. On European Affairs, it turns out that they are also aligned,” he further observes.
Michel Barnier, who was Minister of Foreign Affairs for Jacques Chirac, European Commissioner and Brexit negotiator, does not hide his “interest” in the subject. “He always said that it was important for him and the ministers to have regular exchanges with the European Parliament and the European Commission because that is where things also happen,” we underline in his surroundings.
Barnier’s “Brussels networks”
He will therefore, like his predecessors, “have the opportunity to return,” it is argued. France’s European policy is also shaped on a daily basis in Matignon, the crossroads of economic, environmental and social decisions. “Michel Barnier has an interest in taking advantage of his Brussels networks” to reassure his partners about his “budgetary seriousness”, also notes Sébastien Maillard, of the Jacques Delors Institute.
In July, the EU formally launched an excessive public deficit procedure against France, forcing the new Prime Minister into a difficult balancing act in an attempt to reverse the situation.
“No interest in weakening your Prime Minister”
“On the questions that concern Europeans concerning Europeans, it is really Michel Barnier who has things in hand. On this, Emmanuel Macron is necessarily behind,” points out the expert. “If they are indeed complicit, it can only help the president who therefore has no interest in weakening his Prime Minister,” he says.
We give the impression of democratic and budgetary chaos
The game nevertheless promises to be complicated for the head of state who has positioned himself as leader of the EU since 2017. “France is objectively weakened (…). We give the impression of democratic and budgetary chaos. And once the confidence is gone…” summarizes a MEP close to the Macronists.
“In defensive position”
For Jean-Louis Bourlanges, former centrist president of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Assembly, France is now “in a defensive position and even sometimes isolated, as on Mercosur”. At the beginning of October, Olaf Scholz called for the rapid conclusion of this free trade agreement between the EU and five Latin American countries, including Brazil, against the advice of Paris.
“We were the main political driving force of the Union and we are no longer really followed, or even heard,” laments Jean-Louis Bourlanges, a fine connoisseur of European mysteries, for whom “the dissolution has not yet finished producing its effects” .
Between his electoral defeats and the impossibility for him to run again in 2027, Emmanuel Macron will have “a lot of difficulty finding a strong European and international authority”, he predicts.
France
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