On the evening of Sunday 7 May, relieved European leaders reacted positively to the victory of the pro-European candidate Emmanuel Macron in the French presidential elections.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, said that he was “delighted” that the French people had chosen a “European future”. In his letter to the French leader, who will officially take up position on Sunday 14 May, he stressed the close ties between France and European integration. Juncker also welcomed the fact that the new French President had hailed the values of a “strong and progressive” Europe during his campaign.
Later that evening, the Commission President told France Inter that he was ready to work with Macron on deepening the Eurozone and social Europe.
On Twitter, the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, warmly welcomed not just Macron's victory, but also the fact that the people of France had chosen “liberty, equality and fraternity” and rejected the “tyranny of fake news”. In a letter dated Monday 8 May, the Polish official stressed that France had always played a central role in the construction and development of the EU. With Macron, “I am confident that France will continue to make a constructive contribution to meeting our common challenges and maintaining our unity”.
Beethoven’s 9th at full blast
On Sunday evening, the youngest-ever President-elect of the 5th French Republic had the European anthem played as he appeared before his supporters on the Esplanade of the Louvre Museum following his victory.
Macron will make his first official trip abroad to support French troops posted in Mali, before travelling to Berlin to reaffirm the force of the Franco-German partnership, a parliamentary source who had spent the previous day in the headquarters of the En marche! movement told EUROPE. He will stress France's intention to carry out internal reforms and to invest at European level to move forward the governance of the Eurozone, the source added, referring to the presence of French Liberal MEPs Sylvie Goulard, Jean Arthuis and Jean-Marie Cavada, at the “anti-bling bling” festivities reserved for the inner circle of supporters of the former French Minister for the economy.
Alongside the leaders of the Community institutions, European heads of state and government also lost no time in congratulating Macron. The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, telephoned the new French President on Sunday evening to congratulate him. Her spokesperson stressed that Macron’s victory was a clear victory for a “strong and united Europe” and a deepening of the “friendship between France and Germany”.
The British Prime Minister Theresa May, who will be negotiating Brexit with her European partners from mid-June, warmly congratulated Macron. “France is one of our closest allies and we look forward to working with the new President on a wide range of shared priorities”, a spokesperson announced on Sunday evening.
Still in the EU, Macron’s victory was hailed by the Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, who described it as a “breath of fresh air for the whole of Europe”. Tsipras expressed his firm conviction that cooperation between them would be close, “aiming to change Europe and avoid repeating the nightmare of the extreme right”.
Macron’s political manifesto contains several points of overlap with work underway at European level, for instance in favour of a social Europe with strict controls on seconded workers, defence capabilities for Europe and ‘balanced globalisation’.
This Wednesday 10 May, the European Commission will present a reflection on how to get the best out of globalisation. Next week, it will return an uncompromising judgement on the state of French public finances (see EUROPE 11773).
At Eurozone level, Macron hopes to give the Eurozone its own budgetary capacity, a permanent European finance minister and increased democratic legitimacy through the European Parliament. He also wants citizens’ conventions to be set in place in the member states to feed back ideas on relaunching the European project.
At international level, the American President, Donald Trump, also congratulated Macron on his “big win”, tweeting that he “looked very much forward” to working with him. The first meeting between the two leaders is to take place in the framework of the NATO summit in Brussels on Thursday 25 May.
The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, who had supported the extreme right candidate Marine Le Pen, urged the new French President to “overcome mutual mistrust” between Paris and Moscow, to allow the two countries to work together to fight the “growth in threats of terrorism and militant extremism”.
Macron invited to address the European Parliament
The President of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, has invited Macron to attend a forthcoming plenary session to outline his vision of the future of the European Union. He called upon him to defend a Union that gives “real answers to the citizens’ expectations”.
Le Pen’s defeat shows that the “French have refused to put an extreme right party into power, whose programme would have led to chaos”, said MEP Franck Proust, the chair of the French delegation of the EPP group with the EP, though putting himself in the opposition camp ahead of the general elections to take place in mid-June.
The leader of the Social Democrats, Italy’s Gianni Pittella, welcomed the results of the French presidential elections with great relief. “In the face of the dark and aggressive campaign of the Front National candidate, the victory of Emmanuelle Macron is a relief for France, and also for Europe”. Expressing concern at the fact that the extreme right candidate “aimed at making the destruction of the EU her business”, had secured a third of the votes cast, he stressed that this should be taken as a wake-up call to respond to the doubts expressed by millions of French citizens about Europe. Pittella went on to call for greater social and fiscal justice and a new European investment plan to stimulate the green transition and accompany the digital revolution.
Speaking along the same lines, Philippe Lamberts (Greens/EFA, Belgium) advised Macron to pursue policies that tackle social inequality rather than embark upon “neo-liberal reforms of the employment market”. Gabi Zimmer, the president of the GUE/NGL group, urged the French President to “take position against neoliberalism, the austerity policies that have failed and the destructive socio-economic imbalances”. Without a social and democratic European Union, the European project is doomed to failure, she concluded.
Macron’s long-standing supporter, Belgium’s Guy Verhofstadt, the chair of the ALDE group at the Parliament, hailed the “liberal, social and pro-European” programme of the new French President. However, he noted that in France, “nationalist forces and scepticism about the euro remain strong” and a solid European reform programme will therefore be vital.
The ECR group called for a constructive reform of the European Union responding to the needs of ordinary citizens. Nigel Farage (EFDD, UK), however, said that Macron’s presidency would usher in five more years of failure, more power in the hands of the EU and a continued open-border policy. He said that Le Pen was well placed to win the presidential elections in France in 2022. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic and Lionel Changeur with Mathieu Bion)