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| EU- United we stand - divided we fall |
As France’s next president, Emmanuel Macron, took the stage outside the Louvre on Sunday night
to the strains of Beethoven’s “Ode To Joy,”
the European Union anthem, it was easy to view the centrist, pro-EU
technocrat’s victory over the right-wing populist Marine Le Pen as an
endorsement by the French public of the European project.
This would be a
little misleading. Between Le Pen, François Fillon, and Jean-Luc
Mélenchon—the second-, third-, and fourth-place candidates in the first
round of the election—and various fringe parties, more than two-thirds
of French voters went for euro-skeptic candidates. Those candidates’
supporters went for Macron in the second round less because of
enthusiasm for him than the fact that most of them, though not as many
as in previous elections, considered Le Pen unacceptable.
The contradiction at the heart of the EU—that a project dedicated to the
spread and promotion of democracy continues despite the will of most
European—that a project dedicated to the spread and promotion of
democracy continues
despite the will of most Europeans—has
not gone away.
The project persists in large part because, as the
French election demonstrated, its opponents can’t agree on what an
alternative should look like. And while it’s still early days, the
global political events of the past year may have unexpectedly
strengthened the EU by giving it something to stand against.
A few months ago, the EU looked on the verge of collapse.
The Greek financial crisis and a massive influx of migrants had opened
up fissures between members. Then came Brexit, which European leaders
warned could set off a
race to the exits.
Then came the election of Donald Trump, a president who threatened to
abandon the traditional U.S. support for European integration and
publicly attacked German Chancellor Angela Merkel while praising
Vladimir Putin. All the while, populist, nationalist parties, many with
murky links to the Kremlin, were surging in the polls in a number of
countries.
But in 2017, the wave has crested a bit. In the Netherlands’ March election, far-right candidate Geert Wilders had a
disappointing finish. A pro-European center-right party
won parliamentary elections in Bulgaria, and a pro-European president won in
EU applicant state Serbia. Merkel
appears in good shape
ahead for her re-election bid in September, and even if her center-left
opponent, Martin Schulz, could squeak out a victory, he’s also a strong
backer of European integration.
Brexit will undoubtedly reduce the global economic clout of the union, but it could also make the EU politically stronger by
removing one of the staunchest opponents of European integration. For instance, the EU is
moving to coordinate defense budgets and military command structures, a process
Britain often opposed, viewing it as a back-door means of creating a transnational European army. European governments have also been able to
agree on a common negotiating stance
over Britain’s exit remarkably quickly. Feeling a little more stable
after Macron’s victory, European leaders may be more confident in
enforcing tough terms on Britain to dissuade any other wayward members
from getting similar ideas.
As for Trump, in practice he has turned out to be neither as anti-Europe or as pro-Russian as Brussels feared. He’s
reportedly warming
to the idea of striking a trade agreement with Europe rather than the
bilateral deals that he, and particularly nationalist adviser Steve
Bannon, said he preferred during the campaign.
Trump
has had an impact on European politics by
providing establishment politicians with a counterexample to run
against. Trump and Le Pen have each
praised each other, and she even paid a
visit to Trump Tower—though not to Trump himself—in January. She even went as far as to describe them as part of a
common global movement. But 82 percent of French voters have a negative view of Trump, according to
a poll released last week, so it wasn’t exactly surprising to see anti–Le Pen ads
warning French voters not to “Trump themselves” or to see Macron touting the
support of Barack Obama.
A Trump-led movement is not one the Frenchor any of the Europeans particularly want to be part of.
The European public may still be suspicious of Europe, and
European leaders—who are viewed as distant and undemocratic—still need
to do a much better job of articulating a positive vision of what
they’re for. But thanks to Brexit and Trump, it’s now at least easy for
those leaders to articulate what they’re against.
Read more: Post-Trump, post-Brexit, the EU may end up more unified than ever.
