Fredrik Erixon

Macron’s next move

The French President has already started to wear his federalism lightly

It was a moment to cherish, not to spoil. But I wasn’t the only one at the grand Charlemagne prize ceremony for Emmanuel Macron in Aix-la-Chapelle last week to wonder if the French President has already accepted that the federalist game is up. The medal is awarded for services to the cause of European unification, a cause that Macron has done his best to advance. But first the Brits bailed out. Then the Hungarians and Poles dissented. Now Italy looks set to become the first of the EU’s six founding states with a government abandoning the federalist project.

Angela Merkel and her German conservatives had poured cold water on Macron’s idea of a massive shake-up involving a single finance minister for the eurozone. And Italy has handed the final blow to Macron’s plan. A coalition between the Five Star Movement and the Lega looks set to flaunt all the rules of European orthodoxy — and lay the idea of euro federalism to rest.

Lega and the Five Star both want to rip up EU rules on the budget deficit. Just as Germany and Italy are about to clash on fiscal policy, there will be a feud over migration policy. Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio are more Prada than blackshirts, but they want to close the border for new arrivals. They have nothing but disdain for the idea, touted in Brussels and Berlin in the past years, that refugees in the Italian camps can be allocated to other countries according to an EU formula. And Lega in particular sides with Hungary, Poland and a few others that no government should be punished through the EU budget for ignoring the ‘diktats of Brussels’ or for flouting the rule of law. Macron’s hope for a Europe-wide position on refugees is now in tatters.

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