An article
in the American magazine "Foreign Policy" stated that French President Emmanuel Macron, with the aim of saving France from its economic problems, is causing a major division within the European Union, and that this endeavor revealed the diminishing of Paris and the strengthening of Central and Eastern Europe
.
The article, written by a senior researcher at the Wilfred Martens Center for European Studies, Ewen Drea, stated that Macron's vision of the so-called European strategic autonomy was destroyed today and burned in Ukraine, and instead of Macron leading Europe into a glorious era of integration, he is currently working to widen divisions in the European region. which he warned of in 2017.
Deeply rooted French thought
He added that Macron had proposed in 2017, in order to create a strong Europe capable of leading on the world stage, the establishment of a central European Union with a common political, economic and social model encapsulated in a deeply rooted French idea, to build a strategically independent bloc from the United States.
He said that anyone who has followed French discussions about plans to reshape the European Union for even a moment will realize that this is the system of the French state, with some updates for the environmentally conscious digital age.
France's plans met stiff resistance.
platitudes devoid of substance
He also said that, fortunately for the EU, events over the past year had shielded most of the other 26 member states from appeasing Macron's France-centric views.
His assessment of Russian President Vladimir Putin, his hollow platitudes about peace, and his abdication of any major French role in resisting Russia's "invasion" of Ukraine have undermined confidence in Paris at the EU level.
He added that the latest evidence of Macron's miscalculation is France's renewed attempt to impose its state-based economic model on other EU member states.
It caused widespread conflict on a European scale
So, too, was the recent launch of the EU's industrial Green Deal plan, ostensibly about how best Europe could support industry to meet future climate goals, but quickly revealed to be the trigger for a broader political and economic struggle in Europe between French "intervention" in Market and Brussels' traditional focus on global trade, the EU's internal market, and competition policy as drivers of economic expansion.
The writer continued to enumerate the failures of French economic policies, as well as its policies of rapprochement with Russia, distancing and independence from America, saying that it is not only doomed to failure, but also to make other member states question Macron's motives.
The isolation of Macron and France
He stated that the exposure of the French plan and Paris' combative approach to push it forward at the European level left Macron lacking real political allies in the bloc at a time when confidence in Macron was at rock bottom due to his vacillation over Ukraine and his refusal to assume an important role in the security and defense of Eastern Europe.
He said Macron's approach reflected the more fundamental issue of France's uncertain role in the post-Cold War world.
Macron's enthusiastic overtures to Putin, which continued well into the Ukraine War, were based on his personal belief in French foreign policy as the indispensable arbiter of global relations, in contrast to Britain's policy of ensuring the security of Finland and Sweden even before they joined NATO (NATO). NATO), in addition to France's preoccupation with criticizing Poland for its "Atlantic leanings" in choosing American and South Korean companies instead of French to build new nuclear power plants.