Does the European Union still have support in France? This is the anguished question that many of our European partners arise. They are concerned about the Verbal Anti-European escalation of French leaders, until the declaration of François Bayrou of July 28 evoking about the trade agreement with the United States an act of ” submission “. The former Commissioner Michel Barnier spoke to him “Additional admission”.
Are such criticisms on the part of patent pro-European people so amazing? Probably not. First of all because the EU is far from impeccable. Then because these leaders, faced with their inner failure and a decline in undeniable French influence, have a good game of systematically rejecting responsibility on the EU.
Is it serious? Yes, because what we have been witnessing for a few months, it is an increasingly manifest questioning of what constitutes the heart of the European project, and, it has been believed for a long time, its main asset: its market of 450 million inhabitants. Because those who campaign for a defense Europe, a geopolitical Europe, prey for the shadow: the essential pillar of the EU is an internal market with an external commercial border. However, France continues to undermine this pillar.
Stigmatized competition policy
On the inner level, criticism is not new. For twenty years, France, all political parties combined, without any of our partners, stigmatizing competition policy, one of the five federal EU skills, which guarantees the proper functioning of the internal market. Whether it is state aid, concentrations or the fight against dominant position abuse, nothing is suitable for France. This continuous opposition is expressed from time to time in a sharp way, one of the last psychodramas being the prohibition by the commission of the merger Siemens-Alstom (2019).
In recent news, we even see a rejection of the principle of cooperation between states, which is however the DNA of the common market
But France’s opposition to the internal market also earns the European normative process. Sometimes she criticizes the very principle of regulation, as in matters of AI: Emmanuel Macron, the day after the adoption of ACT after years of work under the responsibility of the French Commissioner Thierry Breton, had estimated that it was a “Bad idea” (sic). Sometimes it is a question of criticizing the absence of regulation: France has exasperated in recent months from the lack of proposal to better protect the access of the youngest to certain online content. Sometimes it is a more subtle critic “The EU does not do it enough”.
In recent news, we even see a rejection of the principle of cooperation between states, which is however the DNA of the common market. Take the example of health. The Member States have been a picrocholine war on the issue of tobacco substitutes for a few months. Sweden, in this area, is ahead of its partners. France, and with it Spain, is hostile to such devices. The French authorities simply claiming to prohibit these systems, nearly ten member states attack it before the Commission. The question is not to prove this or that.
Everyone has arguments. It is to note that it is obviously a question of common interest in Europeans, and that rather than solo escaped in the name of the legitimate protection of health or a disguised protectionism, the common market is precisely made so that Europeans get along on this kind of subject. Even if it means that the European standard allows by transposing each of the countries to adapt the system. It is still necessary that everyone cooperates loyally to the mechanisms of the domestic market. Civil society – In the case of the case, the European Center for International Political Economy (ECIPE) – essential in the European decision -making process, is also concerned about the deterioration of cooperation between Member States.
In total, the agreement of July 28 is not serious for the reasons that are said. Because if he attests to the weakness of the EU, it essentially finds its origin in the incapacity of European leaders, and in particular French, to make Europe a continent of growth and innovation. As such, the common market has a role to play, which should neither overestimate nor be despised. Because to question it permanently is inevitably, sooner or later, take the path taken by the United Kingdom. Do we want?
