Emmanuel Macron’s plans for the French presidency of the Council of the EU are ambitious. A little more than three months before the French presidential elections are held, the president has unfolded this Tuesday in Strasbourg the main lines of his project in a speech with Gaullist airs that, at least, in his initial intervention has come down to little to the concrete . However, in the fiery defense with which he began his words about the rule of law – so questioned in some aspects by partners such as Poland and Hungary – the Frenchman has proposed adding to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union the protection of right to abortion or protection of the environment. “We must not allow the idea to spread that the rule of law is an invention of Brussels. It’s everyone’s idea. It is our treasure,” he proclaimed. The finishing touch to the intervention has been put by European security so that a strategic rearmament “for dialogue with Russia” has been demanded.
This reference to abortion this Wednesday has several readings: in a French key, in the European parliamentary ecosystem and, even, in the internal politics of the European Union. The election of the popular Roberta Metsola has been criticized in France for the position of the Maltese, the third woman to preside over the European Parliament, against the right to voluntary interruption of pregnancy. There are also circumstances that the two predecessors are French: Simone Veil, who promoted this right in the Hexagon, and Nicole Fontaine, under whose presidency in Strasbourg the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU was proclaimed. But Renew, the group of European liberals, has played a key role in Metsola’s success, in which the position of the French, Macron’s political force, is key. And this has unleashed attacks on the Elysee.
The other point in which the proposal is inserted and, probably, of more travel in the European debate is the position that countries like Poland will maintain against it, which with Malta are the only ones that do not accept the right to abortion. It may also collide with the Eurosceptic positions of Eastern states, such as Hungary or Romania, in which they could see this step as one more tool for Brussels to impose its criteria on them. Warsaw and Budapest maintain their challenge to the European institutions from their illiberal positions in which the rule of law is put in check. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU was proclaimed in 2000 and was integrated into the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, hence its modification requires unanimity.
The proposal on abortion has been one of the few concrete ideas that Macron has referred to in his speech, along with the inclusion of the right to protect the environment in the same charter and the granting of the ability to propose laws to the European Parliament, competence that now only has the European Commission. Although, once again, both initiatives collide with the need for the unanimity of the Twenty-seven to get ahead.
“The French presidency will promote the values that have brought us here […]. We are a generation that has rediscovered the precariousness of the rule of law and democratic values. Illiberal democracy has carried out its policy, in recent years, in which it says that the regime that Europe has invented is exhausted and incapable of facing contemporary challenges”, Macron pointed out. “The end of the rule of law is the reign of arbitrariness, the return of authoritarian regimes, a return to the past.” When asked about the attitude that Poland and Hungary maintain on this, he replied that he believes that the application of the sanctions that can be imposed on these countries for their non-compliance is going very slowly.
The nods to Macron’s history have also been in the last part of his speech, when he has displayed Gaullist rhetoric speaking of a “balancing power” for the EU, “because I think that is the vocation of our Europe”. That expression, “balancing power”, already used in the past by Macron, evoking General De Gaulle, when in 1945 he said: “In the world, as it is today, there remain two very great powers, and we are just between them. two, Europe is heading west, the western bridgehead in Europe. It is enough to look at the map to understand that, in this situation, our vital interest commands us to keep ourselves rigorously in balance”.
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Following this example, in the middle of the electoral campaign, Macron has opted for “dialogue with Russia”. “The security of our continent requires a strategic rearmament of our Europe as a power of peace and balance, in particular in the dialogue with Russia. I have been defending this dialogue for several years. It is not an option because both our history and our geography are stubborn, both for us and for Russia, for security on our continent that is indivisible. We need this dialogue. We Europeans must collectively set our own demands and put ourselves in a position to enforce them. A frank and demanding dialogue in the face of destabilization, interference and manipulation”.
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