«La renaissance», the renaissance! More than news, it is a wish and yet this was the headline in Le Figaro on 8 December when the powerful from all over the world were in front of the rediscovered Notre-Dame. But it’s a different world compared to five years ago when the French cathedral burned down. It is a world with bated breath waiting, in about twenty days, for Donald Trump to enter the White House for the second time. In Paris there were all the symbols and symptoms of this change and the echoes of growing instability, which then exploded with the expulsion of the tyrant Bashar al-Assad from Damascus. Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani’s “good guys” are now in charge, but one wonders: is this a real turning point? Europe doesn’t know it and while Israel presides over the Golan and puts its hands and tanks forward Kaja Kallas, who took over from Josep Borrell in the role of EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, is on the side of the obvious: «The end of the dictatorship is a positive development that also shows the weakness of Assad’s supporters: Iran and Russia.” No one must have warned her that the “rebel” flag is flying over the Russian embassy in Damascus to the satisfaction of the Kremlin, even though Vladimir Putin has offered political asylum to Assad, in the tyrants’ neighborhood of Moscow. As usual, Europe has not arrived on the chessboard of international politics.
The reasons? It does not have its own instruments of pressure and above all it is divided. Those who are on the border with Putin after almost three years of useless and bloody conflict in Ukraine have to deal with the growing intolerance of the citizens: Poles, Romanians, Hungarians are tired of war and refugees. Those overlooking the Mediterranean look with concern towards the Middle East and Borrell, who fired at Israel, did not do a good job. Those in Brussels who follow the migrants’ rhetoric do not take into account that nine countries have suspended Schengen and that as soon as the Syrian crisis emerged the first measure was to close the borders. Angela Merkel’s old adage, what’s good for Germany is good for Europe, when the stars on the flag have become 27 no longer works. It is a sort of retaliation: the more the Union expands, the more its cohesion is reduced to a minimum. This was understood right in the churchyard of Notre-Dame. There was an Emmanuel Macron who had imagined the appointment as a celebration of his own grandeur, but instead he is grappling with a political and economic crisis that is unprecedented in the history of the Fifth Republic. He organized a photo opportunity with Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky to try to establish at least an outline of a peace talk. There was no Olaf Scholz, who has an unprecedented economic crisis in Germany and is an orphan of government and electoral consensus. There was no Ursula von der Leyen who quickly signed – encountering very strong opposition from France, Italy and at least seven other EU countries – the treaty with Mercosur, the free trade area of Latin America.
In the reborn Parisian cathedral there was a plastic representation of the absence of Europe, which has now come to an end. At least as she lived and we have known her until today. Donald Trump, who has never recognized the EU, has resumed the strategy of meetings and bilateral agreements and has promoted – as is the case in political matters and economic numbers – Giorgia Meloni as his privileged interlocutor. Beyond the enthusiastic tones he used towards our Prime Minister (the “She’s great” addressed to Lady Georgia went viral: she is great), it is clear that the United States is looking to Rome for its main shore in the Mediterranean and in Europe. The reasons lie precisely in the numbers. Italy today has the only stable government among the “large” ones in Europe. After the resignation of Michel Barnier, Macron does not find a government, but he has a deficit/GDP of 6 percent and a public debt that is close to 3,200 billion in a ratio that is well above 100 percent. One fact above all: bankruptcies are close to 57 thousand, with an increase of 8 percent on an annual basis, and for the first time “spread” has become an unwelcome word for the French. And they are increasingly distant from Brussels: with 27 percent of Eurosceptics, France is the least European state. In Germany, Scholz has to go to the polls in February, the “traffic light” majority, which partly follows the very fragile “Ursula majority” that brought Von der Leyen to her second term at the head of the European Commission, has crumbled under the blows of an unprecedented economic crisis. Stagnation in consumption, recession, collapse in industrial production (-1 percent last month, almost -5 points on an annual basis) with Volkswagen announcing the closure of a total of 14 factories in various countries. To get an idea, just mention one of the many crises: the traditional Mäschle bakery in Laupheim has collapsed, not even the bread is safe anymore.
In a country where small businesses are few, there were 11,324 bankruptcies in the first six months of 2024+30 percent over 2023. In Spain – where the economic fundamentals are good – the weakness of Pedro Sánchez’s government is becoming chronic. Carlos Puigdgemont, the leader of the Barcelona separatists, announced from Brussels that his people have presented a motion of no confidence and will not vote on the 2025 budget. This is the Europe of the strongest states with the members of the former East of the continent seeking their way and where eurosceptics are increasing: in Poland 68 percent don’t want the euro, in Romania the pressure to leave the EU is increasingly stronger and none of the countries that don’t have the single currency want it. It is a restless Europe that tries with the PSE (the Italian Democratic Party is in the forefront of this action) to elect Trump as an “enemy” by waving the bogeyman of the duties that in reality Germany has been making other European nations pay for years. The mechanism? Simple: keep other economies nailed down with the stability pact and the rhetoric of rigor and create enormous trade surpluses based on a now obsolete economic recipe: low-cost energy from Russia, frenzied exports and the reduction of production costs by moving factories to China . It’s the formula for a dramatic flop realized. It is a Europe anchored to the green ideology – the vice-president of the Commission, the Spanish Teresa Ribera Rodríguez, appears like a photocopy of her predecessor Frans Timmermans – that Von der Leyen keeps standing to try not to give herself over to the conservatives. But the car crisis and energy dependence make it impossible to continue on that path. Claudio Descalzi, CEO of Eni, is absolutely right when he says: we boast of having reduced emissions, but it only happened because we took production out of Europe. Eni insists on biofuels and nuclear power, because it is clear that in Brussels they don’t know how to count. But they will say that Trump’s “America First” is to blame. The truth is that the EU has made too many mistakes. Christine Lagarde, the number one at the Central Bank, limits herself to reducing the cost of money by 0.25 percent, a move that is practically irrelevant. He knows that the European economy is struggling (GDP growth of 0.7 percent in 2024, 1.1 percent in 2025, 1.4 percent in 2026 and 1.3 percent in 2027) and is developing by only a third compared to the American one, but it has not decided whether to lower rates more robustly in the face of currently limited inflation or whether to obey Isabel Schnabel who, on behalf of the Bundesbank continues to insist on monetary tightening.
All this while a possible clash between America and China looms on the horizon. Xi Jinping needs like hell to sell the Dragon’s products abroad: the People’s Republic has very weak internal demand – household debt, the real estate bubble and the disastrous budgets of local administrations weigh heavily: out of almost 52 trillion dollars of the debt of local administrations is 28 trillion dollars – and an enormous productive surplus for this reason within the WTO (it entered the World Trade Organization in 2001) continues to promote actions against the West to avoid duties. It will be precisely at the WTO that the United States and China will settle the accounts and Europe risks losing out there. Ursula von der Leyen knows this and for this reason she flaunts the agreement with Mercosur, but it is yet another fig leaf. Between 2019 and today, Germany has lost over 9 percent of industrial production, France 5 and Italy 3.5: energy costs and Chinese aggressiveness are the first factors of the crisis. In ten years Europe has left a third of its production base on the field and in the last five years it has pulverized 900 thousand jobs. So we are starting to think that Mario Draghi’s report which calls for investments of 800 billion euros a year is perhaps the only way out. Joachim Nagel, the head of the Bundesbank, acknowledged to the Financial Times newspaper that “it would be intelligent” to review the German constitutional rule that prevents debt. But he said it thinking of his country which has an economy “with complicated and weak prospects”. It is a question of understanding whether at EU level Germany is willing to give up a stability pact that today seems crazy. Lagarde, in an unusual burst of autonomy, tried to say that “perhaps we need a bit of common debt to start again”. But to a limited extent, because Berlin has no desire to lose control of the EU, even if today at its lowest terms. And then there is always Donald Trump on whom to unload the responsibilities of this Europe that has reached its final call.
