EDITORIAL. Me or chaos… Emmanuel Macron’s anxiety-provoking speech on the future of Europe

At the Sorbonne, the President of the Republic painted an alarmist portrait of the state of Europe on Thursday. A speech which comes a month and a half after complicated European elections for his camp.

Emmanuel Macron delivered a long speech on the future of Europe on Thursday April 25 at the Sorbonne, which sounded like a warning. A solemn warning. “Our Europe is mortal, it can die”, launched the head of state. She is at a “tipping point” and runs a “Immense risk of being relegated”. This is the message he repeated. One would have thought we heard the famous warning from the writer Paul Valéry the day after the slaughter of the Great War: “We other civilizations now know that we are mortal.” According to Emmanuel Macron, Europe is therefore at a crossroads. The surge or the decline? It was a bit me or chaos, but on a continental scale.

Basically, it is true that compared to the rest of the world, Europe is a continent that is weakening. In terms of growth and economic power, it lags behind the American and Chinese giants. It is undergoing a real demographic decline. Vladimir Putin’s offensive in Ukraine has revealed the extent of its military weaknesses. Europe is incapable of producing enough weapons for the Ukrainians and even less of ensuring its defense alone, without the American umbrella. It is also in the perspective of Donald Trump’s return to the White House that Emmanuel Macron issued this warning to his European partners to encourage them to move towards“strategic autonomy”. But this speech also underlines by contrast its political weaknesses.

The contradictions of Emmanuel Macron

It is difficult for the Head of State to congratulate himself on having been right in 2017, during his first speech at the Sorbonne, when he pleaded for the industrial and economic sovereignty of the Union. To affirm that she has “rarely so advanced” in its history for seven years, with, for example, the joint purchase of anti-Covid vaccines or the adoption of the recovery plan, and to admit today, at the same time, that it could well disappear , die. All that for that, one would be tempted to say… And then, more prosaically, when Emmanuel Macron raised the possibility of one day sending ground troops to Ukraine to repel the Russian threat, the list of the majority n He did not benefit from this dramatization in the polls of voting intentions for Europeans.

Not sure that Thursday’s speech will be enough to relaunch Valérie Hayer’s campaign. Which is rather good since the Élysée repeats that this was absolutely not the objective of this speech.