Emmanuel Macron,(IMF head) Christine Lagarde and Angela Merkel talk during the G7 Summit, May, 2017. Nur Photo/ Press Association. All rights reserved.From the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community to the creation of the euro, the European Union has been driven by a Franco-German locomotive. This may have become a cliché but it is no less true for that. As the French side has run out of ideas and stalled on reforming its economy in recent decades, the European train has slowed down.
Germans have come to see the French as less trustworthy than hitherto but have not been entirely happy with the mantle of EU leadership thrust upon them as a result of French woes and Brexit. Donald Trump’s erratic presidency follows its own course but the election of a younger leader in France, who not only seems intent on breaking the fossilised mould of French politics but has an ambitious policy for modernising the economy, has revived hope that the EU can move forward. Grand talk of reinventing the Eurozone is widely off the mark, but new ideas are needed.
That will be no easy task but it is best not to put the cart before the horse. Macron faces a number of tests on the home front. His young party, La République en Marche, must secure a majority or – at the very least, a large plurality of seats in the National Assembly in this month’s parliamentary elections. The latest polls suggest his party will attract about 30% of the vote in the first round of the elections on 11 June – a ten point gain in a month, putting the party within reach of winning an absolute majority in the run-off round on 18 June.
