President Macron had barely been inaugurated this week when he travelled to Berlin on a visit that was ultimately of the highest symbolic significance.
His visit bears an uncanny resemblance to another, also to Germany and it, too, in the month of May: on Monday 8 May 1950, French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman dispatched one of closest allies, a magistrate from Alsace, named Michlich, bearing what, in the hours that follow, would become the “Schuman Declaration”, along with a personal message from the minister to German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. The French Foreign Ministry had been kept completely in the dark. Even the French Ambassador to Germany, André François-Poncet was unaware that Paris had sent an envoy. On the morning of Tuesday 9 May, Michlich handed over the documents to the chancellor who was in the middle of a meeting of the federal government, a meeting immediately suspended. Adenauer read the documents and discovered that the project set out by his French Social Democrat friend was “not economic but eminently political”¹ and immediately agreed to it. In Paris, where the French government was also meeting, Schuman strung out the discussions until the “green light” from Germany was received and the project devised by Jean Monnet’s inner circle was approved by the French ministers. At 6 o’clock in the evening, in the Salon de l’Horloge of the French Foreign Ministry on the Quai d’Orsay, Robert Schuman made the declaration that would change the face of Europe.
This short historic digression has been included for a reason. If one looks carefully, one can see a number of similarities between the two journeys. For example, there are the liberties taken by two political leaders in making their moves freely, unfettered by the devoted guardians of national sovereignty. “Diplomats don’t like anything that is new. They are tradition bearers, and that’s a good thing. But, to make history, it’s not traditions alone that are needed, invention is required…”, commented one who was present when Schuman uttered his words, Jacques-René Rabier². No doubt, the French foreign office has gradually come round to the need to find an accommodation with the Europe being built since the first Community but there can be no assurance that the Quai d’Orsay is inhabited only by the likes of Philippe Etienne, France’s ambassador to Germany and former permanent representative to the EU whom Emmanuel Macron has appointed as his foreign policy adviser.
In short, from what he said and the position he adopted in Berlin, this young president has re-established the French Republic’s forgotten men, Schuman and Monnet. The semper vigilant guardians of Gaullist orthodoxy who still outnumber the rest in France were presented with a fait accompli, just like the Quai d’Orsay all those years ago. Symbolically, it’s superb!
Then, France’s newly elected head of state continually stresses the crucial importance of restoring trust. In Berlin, he pledged to “restore full and complete trust” with Germany. Is it enough just to hear that, to this end, he will implement reforms that will finally see his country equipped for the task economically and fiscally, acceding to the calls from Berlin – and Brussels – that have long gone unheeded?
No, the substance of his message is much more complex. In truth, it is of a highly-sophisticated simplicity. If he wants the “radical reform” of Europe built on a Franco-German relationship that is founded on “trust” and not “pressure”, as Mathieu Bion wrote (see EUROPE 11788), it’s because the time for mutual trust is back. In Paris and Berlin today, and then tomorrow in those capitals (not all no doubt) that hitch their wagon to the newly re-tuned Franco-German engine.
Let there be no misunderstanding, the Berlin meeting was a dialogue between equals. Even though Chancellor Merkel, not long before the German general election in September, conceded nothing in terms of firm progress at European level, she was, at the same time, careful to keep the door closed to changes of traditional German positions. On the contrary, very undiplomatically, she said how pleased she would be at the end of June to see the new president hold a majority in parliament that supports his ideas – which, if one cares to look, is a bit of a slap to those who, as Republicans, are her allies in the European People’s Party.
She is no less aware than Emmanuel Macron: the battle now being entered has moved on, as Prof. Zaki Laïdi says, “from confrontation between the left and the right to confrontation between the pro-Europeans and the anti-Europeans, between the outward looking and the inward looking” (Project Syndicate, 10 May 2017). It is impossible to see it any other way given the latest political developments in France, and indeed, when one looks at the rise virtually throughout Europe (and in the United States) of nationalist, often xenophobic, forces that swear by retrenchment behind the pipe dream of protective national borders.
It’s there that, when Mr Macron asks Mrs Merkel and, through her, all European leaders, to make sure that Europe, as it is being built, once again is able to provide protection to its citizens; no genuinely responsible person can ignore his call. Not even the most powerful woman in Europe! Journalist Nathalie Nougayrède is absolutely right when she says that, in defeating Marine Le Pen, Emmanuel Macron “has prevented Merkel from going down in history as the German chancellor who presided over the EU’s unravelling” (The Guardian, 15 May).
Angela Merkel knows this better than anyone. And better than anyone, she knows that, if it were still possible to ask as a Eurobarometer question – deemed politically incorrect, of course – which countries European citizens trust, Germany would pay the price for its domination within inter-governmental bodies over recent years. Hence her warm welcome to a French president, the herald of potential re-balancing of the Franco-German partnership, the possible return to the Community approach after the aberrations and democratic shortcomings of the inter-governmental approach and, therefore, the potential revival of Europe in the coming weeks and months.
French journalist and columnist with The Guardian Nathalie Nougayrède is correct, too, when she writes that “the Macron-Merkel get-together in Berlin was a demonstration of democratic resilience, a show of political resistance in an era of populist pressures, as well as a message to the autocrats who – as Macron said on the night of his election – are seen to represent a threat to the interests of France and to Europe”.
With the trust that is being reborn between Paris and Berlin, Europe may be in for better days. At last!
Michel Theys
¹ Jean Monnet, Mémoires, Fayard, 1976
² Michel Theys, Jacques-René Rabier. Fonctionnaire-militant au service d’une... certaine idée de l’Europe, P.I.E. Peter Lang