For Nicolas Beytout, editorial director of "L'Opinion", believes that Europe will miss the end of the crisis.
The ambitious European recovery plan comes up against all kinds of constraints of the European Union and its member states.
As a result, help will arrive too late.
Bruno Le Maire announced yesterday at Sonia Mabrouk's microphone that France would receive a first payment of European recovery funds next September.
That is to say 18 months after the principle will have been stopped by the common will of Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel.
It was a year ago, almost to the day: the two leaders had indeed pinpointed the launch of a European loan repayable by Europe (and not - that was the great novelty - repayable by each country receiving aid).
The promise, at the time, was for 500 billion euros, a gigantic sum quickly raised to 750 billion.
The very evening of this announcement, Emmanuel Macron had, in a conversation with some journalists, confided that "the next day for Europe had started".
"The day after" ?
Yes, entering another dimension, with an ambition, a new power ...
… And since…
since? Nothing. And we will still have to wait at least 6 months, as Bruno Le Maire said. Note: neither Emmanuel Macron nor Angela Merkel have anything to do with this. This is the result of the senseless heaviness caused by the operating rules of Europe: each capital had to ratify the project, which means that all Europeans were subjected to the whims of agendas or to the selfishness of each member country. .
And then, once the principle had been validated, everyone had to present their plan to the Commission to have it endorsed (which will be done these days). In short, procedures impossible to master at national level, and finicky obligations at Brussels level. And months, quarters, semesters pass while our major American and Chinese competitors have already massively revived their economies. A waste of time for our continent which will obviously cost us dearly in terms of competition. And politically, this lesson in inefficiency is disastrous.
Because the image of Europe and Brussels comes out weakened…
Exactly. Which is not politically neutral, if only because the divide between pro and anti-Europeans finds there a new reason to harden. One more. In a few months, France will take over the presidency of Europe; it will be early 2022, a stone's throw from the presidential election. We already know that Emmanuel Macron will want to make the European project a weighty element in his electoral campaign.
To see what happened for vaccines, and what goes wrong with the recovery plan, not sure that this is particularly favorable ground on the political level. In this conversation with Emmanuel Macron, which I related a moment ago, the Head of State told us: "If we are lucid, at the start of the crisis, Europe was not up to the task" . She won't have been during, and she doesn't seem ready to be after.