Since taking office, Emmanuel Macron's speeches on Europe have been linked and repeated. Seven years after his first European speech at the Sorbonne, and seven months after the second, the President of the Republic participated this Wednesday, November 13 in a round table at the Collège de France to discuss the “future of European competitiveness”.
At his side, the former president of the European Central Bank (ECB) and short-lived president of the Italian Council, Mario Draghi, also author of a report on the issue published in September. “We agree on the essentials, introduced the head of state. We have a growth model which for 30 years has created less wealth per capita than in the United States, for example. “It’s a real problem for us because we have a more generous social model and a continent that is aging.”
But there is no question of questioning one's own action or the direction of the European march, the fault being, according to Macron, in the speed of the action, not in its nature: ” We have made decisions in the right directions, but perhaps we are not doing it quickly enough”.
The decline of Europe
Hosting, economist Philippe Aghion, inspiration for the Macronist economic program in 2017. If he does not skimp on shoe polish, welcoming the so-called ” struggle ” continual support from the president for “more coordinated industrial policies between EU Member States” and his rank of “leaders among the most visionary in Europe”his reading of the European situation is harsher than his own: “Europe is in a phase of decline”. Just like Mario Draghi, for whom Europe “became” in recent years “even more dependent on the United States” in too many areas. “The election of Donald Trump must be a wake-up call”he said.
And ” awakening ” is it compatible with an exercise in self-satisfaction? Rather than waking up, Emmanuel Macron invites the continent to “accelerate” the liberal course taken by the continent for so many years. In the front row, Roselyne Bachelot, former Minister of Culture, and Clément Beaune, former Minister Delegate in charge of Transport, applaud wildly. “Our strength is the single market, proclaims Emmanuel Macron. We must go further and make it a domestic market of 430 million consumers, but not with 27 rules! ». Hence the urgency, according to him, to draw a « simplification agenda ».
His goal? create « champions » of innovation capable of bringing about industrial renewal. But not a multiplication of small champions, the president rather hopes to see the emergence of giants capable of competing with American or Chinese locomotives. “We have a bias in Europe: that of geographical returnhe believes. Let it be said: there will not be 27 returns (on investment, editor's note) in each country. We must agree to have a “best athlete” approach: we need a European agency which selects the best projects and there will be a European champion. He might be in Poland, and it won't matter for France or Germany.”. The French who see their industrial fabric crumbling a little more every day will appreciate it.
Repeated twice
Remarks identical to those he had made at the Sorbonne seven years ago. “Let us create a European agency for innovation within two years, to be in the position of innovator and not follower. »he projected. Citing a model: the American military research agency DARPA, an agency of the United States Department of Defense, responsible for the research and development of new technologies. The same one which, in the 1970s, was at the origin of the creation of the Internet. Macron called, already in 2017, to create “European champions” thanks to the « occasions » permitted by the “single digital market”. In 2024, still nothing.
Last September, the president expressed a related wish: that the European Union becomes by 2030 a « leader mondial » in five “strategic sectors of tomorrow” : artificial intelligence, quantum computing, space, biotechnologies and “new energies” (hydrogen, modular reactors and nuclear fusion).
Hope renewed at the Collège de France this Wednesday. “We have talent in Europe, we have savings and therefore capital, carbon-free energy, and a social and democratic model which is there and which holds. If we know how to make the right decisions with the speed, seriousness and collective commitment of the 27, there is every reason to be optimistic”he argued in conclusion. In the meantime, the right economic, social, democratic and environmental measures have still not been taken…
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