As soon as he moved into the Élysée Palace in May 2017 as France’s youngest leader since Napoleon, President Emmanuel Macron flew to Berlin in a vivid demonstration of his highest foreign policy priority: to get Europe moving again.
He was determined to establish a close rapport with then German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the hope that together they could infuse new energy and inspiration into the European Union. Macron’s vision was to turbocharge the drive for European integration and make the world’s largest commercial bloc capable of defending its own interests and standing up to China, Russia, and the United States in a new age of great power rivalry.
Macron believed that progress toward enacting his grand strategy to construct a European superpower was only possible if he could develop a warm kinship with Merkel, similar to the personal bond that linked their predecessors François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl three decades earlier. But Merkel was reluctant to embrace Macron’s blueprint for bold change and her innate caution clashed with Macron’s impetuous nature. Having grown up on the other side of the Berlin Wall, Merkel was less imbued with a European mindset than Kohl and other predecessors.
Despite their personality differences, Macron and Merkel pressed ahead with attempts to revive the French-German tandem that has always been so central to the progress of European unity. They convened joint cabinet meetings and drew up a new bilateral treaty for “cooperation and integration” that was signed in Aachen in January 2019.
As the leader of the EU’s foremost military power with an independent arsenal of 300 nuclear weapons, Macron was even prepared to extend France’s nuclear deterrent to cover Germany and other European partners. But Merkel balked at an explicit commitment, fearing it would antagonize the United States, so the treaty only called for France to use “all means necessary” to help defend Germany against a foreign aggressor.
A Dramatic Speech
Macron spelled out his vision for Europe’s future in September 2017 in a dramatic speech at the Sorbonne University that sought to lay the building blocks for a United States of Europe. He called for integrated capital markets and a fiscal union, a Europe-wide insurance scheme for bank deposits, Eurobond assets to shore up the single currency, and even a new EU intelligence agency. Within France, he urged his compatriots to embrace controversial measures to modernize its institutions. Macron’s aggressive reform agenda would later be strongly endorsed by former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi and former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta in separate reports on what the European Union must do to encourage dynamic innovation and stronger economic growth in the face of global challenges.
In Macron’s view, there was no time to lose in the wake of Brexit and Donald Trump’s US presidency to ensure the survival of the European ideal. But he was frustrated by the meekness shown by Merkel, her successor Olaf Scholz, and other European leaders who shied away from his plea for Europe to achieve strategic sovereignty by taking control of its own destiny. When they prevaricated over his proposals, Macron would bluntly tell them that if they did not agree they should come forward with plans of their own rather than stall or delay decisions.
Seven years later, Macron gave another speech at the Sorbonne, noting some progress but also lamenting the failure to achieve a great leap toward political and economic integration, which he believes is necessary for Europe to compete in the arena of great powers, saying “the battle is not yet won.” With the United States no longer willing to provide defense guarantees, he also urged his fellow leaders to lose no time in stepping up military cooperation to fill Europe’s security vacuum.
A Blizzard of Ideas Not Executed
Merkel and other critics argued that while Macron churned up a blizzard of ideas, he came up short on how to execute them. She complained that his approach to move fast and break things wasted her time and energy cleaning up the mess he left behind.
Despite this kind of criticism, Macron’s pressure tactics helped achieve major accomplishments. Working with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, he pushed through an economic recovery plan worth more than €750 billion to ease the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in July 2020, a rescue package that some economists believe saved much of the continent from a deep recession.
In some ways, Macron was a victim of his own naivete and lack of experience. He became president of France at the age of 39 despite having never been previously elected to public office. From the beginning, I was fascinated by Macron’s audacious proposals and decided to chronicle his youthful presidency, which stood in stark contrast to the gerontocracy that rules the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court in my own country, the United States.
Since then, we have held several extended conversations about the fate of his policy prescriptions, his learning curve, and his difficulties in persuading French and European peers to adopt drastic change before it’s too late.
A Mortal Danger
Macron’s impatience with the slow pace of progress in Europe reflects his abiding fear that the rise of populist nationalism across Europe poses a mortal threat to the continent’s future political and economic integration. Even though he twice defeated Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s hard-right Rassemblement National (RN), in presidential elections, her party has continued to climb in the polls and now ranks as the strongest political movement ahead of the 2027 elections to choose Macron’s successor (he is limited to two terms).
In our conversations, Macron repeatedly warned that if his radical reforms failed, it would pave the way for Le Pen or another right-wing demagogue to take over France. With right-wing, xenophobic parties gaining support elsewhere, he believes their ascendancy to power could soon lead to the demise of the European Union. “The French poet Paul Valéry reminded us that civilizations are mortal,” Macron told me. “The Europe we see today could die, too. I hope our people are aware of the risks.”
Less than 16 months before he leaves the presidency, Macron seems resigned to doing what he can to salvage Europe’s future. Following the disastrous parliamentary snap election of summer 2024, he has left domestic matters to a series of prime ministers who have abandoned much of his reform program. Macron expects to concentrate on foreign and security matters pertaining to Europe, notably Ukraine, where he has established a strong relationship with his counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky.
He has jettisoned his early efforts to reach out to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to defuse the Ukraine conflict. However, he still believes that Europe will never achieve lasting peace and stability until it reaches some kind of security understanding with Russia—though that may have to wait for new leadership in Moscow.
Eyes on Africa
Looking ahead, Macron says Europe should turn its eyes to the south. He shares the view of French historian Fernand Braudel that Europe should build new bridges with post-colonial Africa, particularly because of its enormous economic potential. By the end of this century, demographic projections show one in three human beings will be African, while Europe’s population will continue to shrink.
Africa is emerging a new theater of great power rivalry, as China, Russia, and the United States compete for precious resources, such as rare earth metals, which could drive the next phase of economic expansion. According to the World Bank, six of the world’s ten fastest-growing economies are African. Macron has tried to convince his peers to pursue a European strategy toward Africa, but they have refused, due to fears it would entrap them in a military quagmire in the Sahel region and east Congo.
Macron believes that over the next three decades, Africa could experience a “spectacular transformation” that will amaze the world. “There is a new generation of Africans that has no personal connection to the colonial past, and young people there are determined to rid the continent of corruption and bad government,” Macron told me in one of our recent conversations. “We must act urgently because so many problems are culminating in Africa at the same time, including drought, famine, and civil wars. We must help Africa succeed, or the human trafficking and illegal immigration that directly affects Europe will get much worse.”
Despite the mixed legacy of his reformist ideas, Macron sees that other leaders are now coming around to his convictions about the need for Europe to seize control of its own fate or else be picked apart by the great powers. As Macron predicted, the era of depending on America as Europe’s ultimate security guarantor is over. In Germany’s current chancellor, Friedrich Merz, he has finally found the soul mate he was seeking in Berlin.
Even Atlanticist leaders in Europe such as Merz now recognize the prescience of Macron’s concept of strategic sovereignty. It is now accepted dogma across much of the European Union that the continent can no longer rely on Chinese markets, Russian energy, and American military power to safeguard its peace and prosperity. But as he enters the twilight days of his presidency, Emmanuel Macron can find little consolation in having been proved right in his diagnosis of what ails France and Europe.
William Drozdiak is the author of The Last President of Europe: Emmanuel Macron’s Race to Revive France and Save the World. A former foreign editor and chief European correspondent for The Washington Post, he is currently a visiting lecturer at the European University Institute in Florence and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC.
