{"id":518545,"date":"2025-10-22T02:48:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T02:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/518545\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T02:48:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T02:48:12","slug":"sun-sets-on-macron-as-europes-visionary-in-chief-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/518545\/","title":{"rendered":"Sun sets on Macron as Europe\u2019s visionary-in-chief \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Macron in recent months has become more cautious, balking at proposals that risk generating a backlash in France, and more prickly with regard to proposals he doesn\u2019t control. France has instead poured its energy into slashing red tape.<\/p>\n

In recent weeks the French leader has been pushing for more controls on migration and for red tape to be slashed, while lobbying for new rules to keep children off social media and bidding to create carveouts for automakers on green targets<\/a>. Hardly the stuff of European dreams.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis Macron has been consumed by domestic troubles,\u201d said an EU diplomat. \u201cHe is no longer the European champion we once knew.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Macron in recent months has become more cautious, balking at proposals that risk generating a backlash in France. | Ludovic Marin\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Not the same man(u) <\/p>\n

When it comes to the changes the European Union has seen in the last decade, it\u2019s hard to understate Macron\u2019s influence and foresight. Speaking at the Sorbonne University in 2017, he argued forcefully for a more muscular Europe that wasn\u2019t so dependent on partners overseas, either for manufactured goods or for its own defense.<\/p>\n

His call fell on deaf ears at the time. Today, however, the European Commission and leaders across the bloc preach Macron\u2019s gospel of \u201cstrategic autonomy\u201d as they try to diversify away from China<\/a> and beef up the continent\u2019s military capacities in the face of Russian aggression and American military retrenchment.<\/p>\n

Macron earned the nickname of the EU\u2019s \u201cthink-tanker in chief,\u201d and his blizzard of initiatives and ideas for reforming Europe defined his early tenure as a leader on the world stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Macron in recent months has become more cautious, balking at proposals that risk generating a backlash in France,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[10541,11783,767,6850,768,346,1395,2437,473,32,2595,53958,34,35,6561,2000,299,5187,1105,6644,36,24402,1945,1824,4582,2190,806,43,44,2452,22708,6657,2597,25482,2443,48,13492,182,7497,1201,657,1220,1781,771],"class_list":{"0":"post-518545","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-albania","9":"tag-antonio-costa","10":"tag-baltics","11":"tag-beef","12":"tag-borders","13":"tag-cars","14":"tag-china","15":"tag-companies","16":"tag-defense","17":"tag-donald-trump","18":"tag-drones","19":"tag-due-diligence","20":"tag-emmanuel-macron","21":"tag-energy","22":"tag-enlargement","23":"tag-eu","24":"tag-europe","25":"tag-european","26":"tag-far-right","27":"tag-farmers","28":"tag-france","29":"tag-french-political-crisis","30":"tag-friedrich-merz","31":"tag-germany","32":"tag-human-rights","33":"tag-hungary","34":"tag-industry","35":"tag-macron","36":"tag-marine-le-pen","37":"tag-media","38":"tag-mercosur","39":"tag-migration","40":"tag-military","41":"tag-montenegro","42":"tag-regulation","43":"tag-rights","44":"tag-slovenia","45":"tag-social-media","46":"tag-strategic-autonomy","47":"tag-trade","48":"tag-ukraine","49":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","50":"tag-viktor-orban","51":"tag-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}