The program includes official events, including a dinner at the Royal Palace in Amsterdam at the invitation of King Willem-Alexander, talks with local Prime Minister Mark Rutte and, finally, Macron’s speech in The Hague, where he will present its vision of Europe’s Economic Security.
It must be said that the owner of the Elysée Palace has been peddling this subject for more than a year, but attention has now focused on him in France about his sensational statements made during a recent interview with the French newspaper Les Echoes. He stresses the importance of Europe’s “strategic autonomy” and less dependence on the United States. The priority, according to Macron, should be to serve their own interests, not “adapting to the agenda of other parts of the world”. At the same time, he noted that Europe has every chance of becoming the world’s “third pole” along with the United States and China.
Dreams of European strategic autonomy have long been heard, but Old World politicians disagree on how to achieve it
If, as we believe here, he naturally had in mind, first of all, the situation around Taiwan, where, according to him, there is no need to involve Europe, it was also a matter of sovereignty economy, without which everything speaks of the independence of the European Union vis-à-vis Washington is only an empty sound.
On how to achieve this, or at least try to do so, Emmanuel Macron has already clarified in a sensational interview. In my memory, for the first time, the current French head of state has declared that in the context of financing the economies of EU member countries, we must ensure that they “do not depend on the ‘extraterritoriality of the dollar’, i.e. they cease to use it as a settlement currency in foreign trade transactions. at least an obvious irritation in the United States, like, moreover, other declarations of the French leader who obviously allowed himself a lot.
And yet, how does Emmanuel Macron imagine Europe’s “economic security” doctrine, which is directly linked to its strategic autonomy? Few here doubt that the issue of the creation in Europe of an analogue of the US Inflation Reduction Act will be raised with renewed vigor. The numerous attempts by Europeans, including Macron himself, to obtain concessions from Joe Biden on this track have come to nothing, and now a number of companies, and mainly German ones, have already started to relocate there. abroad, where they were promised energy benefits. Emmanuel Macron has already proposed, like the United States, to create a sovereign fund for the development of continental industry, which would have more than 200 billion euros in its account. Admittedly, not all European capitals are ready to get started.
Another direction on which Paris insists is the strengthening of the defense industry. However, here it is sure to face big problems. While the French build their security almost entirely on the basis of their own “defense”, and this includes aviation, armored vehicles and naval vessels, including nuclear submarines and even an aircraft carrier, most other EU and NATO countries, for example, the same Netherlands are actively buying American equipment and have no intention of giving it up. In order to achieve greater energy independence, Paris in its doctrine also proposes to emphasize the development of nuclear energy. But there is no European consensus in this area either. Thus, Germany is very cold towards this initiative and prefers the “green agenda”, which, compared to the “peaceful atom”, has already shown an order of magnitude lower efficiency.
Macron’s plans are therefore quite reasonable, but there will be problems with implementation. And a lot.
In the meantime
The main problem with European strategic autonomy, which Macron spoke about again after his return from China, is that EU countries do not have a common understanding of what this autonomy means and why it is needed.
In the mid-2010s, when the concept of strategic autonomy was just being developed, it was first and foremost about the ability of the European Union to lead autonomously, without the help of the United States , military operations and to ensure its own security. But opinions on how to organize this ability and where to apply it later diverged from the start.
France demanded an immediate and tangible result – in the form, for example, of a joint EU rapid reaction force that could be used to protect French interests in Africa. For Germany, it was not so much the result that was important, but the process of military-political integration, albeit slow, but, above all, as broad as possible – with the inclusion, if possible, of all EU countries. Moreover, the Germans were in no particular hurry to send their troops out of the country. In Poland, the Baltics and other Eastern European countries, all these talks were viewed with suspicion, fearing that the development of EU military capabilities would reduce NATO’s role and weaken ties with the United States. The Eastern Europeans agreed to participate in the process only on the condition that all this military integration was aimed primarily at protecting the “eastern flank”. And only with close cooperation with the North Atlantic Alliance and the United States – they frankly do not want to entrust their security to Germany and France in the east of the EU.
Little has changed in the past ten years. All the while, France has called on Germany to somehow become more active and even hinted at the possibility of extending its nuclear umbrella to the whole of the European Union. But all these proposals did not arouse much interest among the Germans. Berlin says strategic autonomy should not aim to break with the United States, but to form a “European pillar of NATO”, i.e. to make the EU an equal partner of the Americans within the framework of the covenant. On the one hand, Germany thus reassures Poland and the other Eastern Europeans. But on the other hand, the Germans themselves don’t want to sever transatlantic ties, because they don’t really believe that in the foreseeable future anyone other than the Americans will be able to protect the European Union.
It is therefore not surprising that Macron’s remarks caused a wave of criticism not only in Poland, but also in Germany. Warsaw hastened to declare that the alliance with the United States was the “absolute basis” of Polish security, and at the same time recalled its distrust of Western Europeans. “Some Western leaders only dream of cooperating with someone – with Russia or with some Far Eastern powers,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said. The Germans pointed out to Macron that he was weakening the European Union with his statements and that “in today’s dangerous world” the United States and the EU should stick together. All this, however, does not mean that Germany is willing to participate in the conflict with China on the side of the United States. But in the end, she won’t really have any other choice. An attempt to sever ties with the Americans now could blow up the European Union from within, which is exactly what Germans fear most – even more so than cutting their economic ties with China. Moreover, Germany’s main economic, and now also energy, partner is not China, but the United States. Thus, most likely, Macron’s proposals, having met with no agreement in the EU, will simply go to waste, just like all the French calls made on the subject of European strategic autonomy.
Prepared by Vasily Fedortsev
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