“A sovereign Europe”. Macron lays out the priorities for France’s presidency of the Council of the EU (which starts this January, see comments)

26 comments

  1. > The presidency will happen in a tense strategic environment with rising regional tensions especially in Europe’s neighborhood, the persistence of the pandemic, growing global inequalities and climate change.
    Against this backdrop, Macron’s ambition is to “move from a Europe of cooperation within its borders to a powerful and fully sovereign Europe that masters its destiny on the global stage”. To achieve this goal, France will promote three priorities: building a more sovereign Europe, developing a new growth model and creating a more human Europe.

    —

    > – **First pillar: building a more sovereign Europe. This means:**

    > *(i) Better controlling 🇪🇺 borders through a reform of the Schengen area (w/ regular ministerial meetings), the creation of an emergency mechanism to support 🇪🇺 countries under pressure, the migration and asylum pact.*

    > *(ii) Creating the conditions for a “European strategic sovereignty” with the adoption in March of the Strategic Compass, the first 🇪🇺 white book on security and defense. President Macron notably stressed the need to focus on new domains (space, cyber, maritime).*

    > *(iii) Ensuring the stability and prosperity of Europe’s neighborhood, especially in:*

    > *(a) Africa with a EU-AU summit in February which will aim at developing an agenda on the financing of African economies and cooperation on health, climate, mobility, education and security.
    (b) the Western Balkans with a conference in June. This region is “at the heart” of Europe for President Macron who called for a political and economic re-engagement of Europe to promote economic integration, address the issue of minorities, and fight against interference.*

    —

    > – **Second pillar: developing a new growth model for 2030. France will host a summit on March 10-11 to address 4 challenges:**

    > *(i) Europe’s ability to innovate thanks to investments and industrial alliances in key domains (hydrogen, batteries, cloud, space, semiconductors, health). This goal would require adapting the 🇪🇺 budgetary framework and adopting a capital markets union.*

    > *(ii) Achieving the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 by decarbonating our economies, implementing a carbon tax mechanism or promoting environmental clauses in trade agreements.*

    > *(iii) Making Europe a digital power through the support to digital champions, an integrated and regulated digital market (DMA and DSA regulations) and taxation on digital giants.*

    > *(iv) Building a social Europe (directives on minimum wage and salary transparency).*

    —

    > – **Third pillar: creating a Europe on a human scale. This would translate into:**

    > *(i) The conclusion in May of the Conference on the future of Europe which aims at making Europe closer to its citizens and could lead to a revision of 🇪🇺 treaties.*

    > *(ii) The defense of 🇪🇺 values (which are “existential”) notably through the promotion of press freedom.*

    > *(iii) An independent work on Europe’s history to fight against revisionism.*

    > *(iv) Greater people-to-people exchanges through universities and a new European civic training.*

    > All in all, quite an agenda with many meetings and events to be organized across France.

    > President Macron will be personally involved in [many summits](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FGMC-PXWUAgQqLD.jpg) and meetings of the European Council. He told the press that he will be engaged “until the last minute” of his mandate

  5. On one hand, I’m all for a stronger, leaner, more integrated and more unified Europ, and Macron (combined with a more pro-EU germany than before) give me good hope for implementing some much-needed reforms.

    On the other hand, if it were up to Macron, this is a Europe built in Macron’s image, and I’ve been liking this image less as the months go by. The increasing willingness for Macron to join a mudslinging contest with Boris Johnson, or the AUKUS spat, or the increasingly frequent “anti-woke” rhetoric all make me feel uneasy. There’s also the insistence of using French during the EU presidency (don’t know all the details), and Francafrique providing an example of what EU-Africa economic relations might look like, with all its neocolonial implications.

  6. > Making Europe a digital power through the support to digital champions, an integrated and regulated digital market (DMA and DSA regulations) and taxation on digital giants.

    As someone who spent three days just trying to sign up for classes at a French University, because the portal kept going down; Mr President, France has an exceptionally difficult task ahead of herself to accomplish this goal for Europe. I shouldn’t be able to effectively DOS a University web portal in a regional capital by having too quick a clicking finger. An international brand like Makita should not have such obvious differences in quality between [their USA](https://www.makitatools.com/) and [.FR](https://www.makita.fr/) sites. This is all because France is anything but a leader in software and tech.

  7. A sovereign Europe all the way baby. Just not with French. Either it’s English, Latin, German or something like that. No on wants to speak baguette.

  8. I’m thinking the French presidency of the EU will either make or break the EU. If I were a gambling man…

  15. If the taxonomy is anything to go by then every non top 3 central power should resist the federalist dreams fiercely.

    What the EU cannot do de jure: decide over private property owned under the legislation of any of its member states.

    What the EU did instead: force financial actors inside the EU to adopt punishment credit rates for non taxonomy compliant businesses, effectively forcing through whichever changes they want through the market mechanism.

    What that means for the hundreds of thousands of Nordic households that own forests: all forest procurement actors are forced through market mechanisms to buy raw material from taxonomy compliant forests. 20% of your forest has to be sacrificed for carbon storage for it to be compliant. The social and monetary credit for the carbon stored goes to the union. French, German and Italian feuda.. I mean federal lords claim the carbon that you have stored as theirs and steals that money from you.

    What it means for the climate: deforested Europe stays deforested. The french farms that deforested Europe stays deforested because their leadership has found political ways to magically claim the forests of others as theirs. Neocolonialist vibes much.

    What could have been done instead, for the normal household and for the climate: carbon stored in forests could be sold by the forest owners on the carbon markets, yielding them a larger income than they would have gotten from traditional forestry, drastically increasing stored carbon and slowing climate change at a much faster pace than it will under the stupid taxonomy.

    Germany, France and Italy: Meh, let’s just play stupid political games for the benefit of the people of our national identity instead. The rest of Europe is for us to colonize.

  17. Macron senses the weakening of Germany. He is coming to Budapest, to meet V4 leaders, including Orban (as well as Hungarian opposition).

    Macron be like: “Look at me. I am the captain now.”

  19. Honestly some great points. I love the part about universities, having a common university cursus accross Europe would be fantastic. It was already in the treaty he signed with Italy a few weeks ago and I love it. Also having a bit of european political ambition after so much stagnation this past decade is also very encouraging.

    Obviously the comments here are all bitching about it but it’s well known that this sub is the most anti-european place you can find on the web.

  23. As an American, I’ve always wondered what the official langauges of a united Europe would be. German maybe? Or French?

  24. I actually really love that idea on investment in technology and science. A friend and I have been going through the process of opening our nanotechnology and nanorobtic start up but due to the superior benefits we got in the UK, we decided against Europe.

    I hope this goes through because we much rather start operations in Europe than here, but are also in desperate need of help. I doubt we are the only ones who’d prefer Europe but can’t move.

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