September 28th, 2017
A pro-government columnist thinks the ten-year road map for a closer European Union laid out by President Macron of France is a collection of commonplaces or unrealistic ideas which merely aim at bolstering his dwindling popularity at home.
Magyar Hírlap’s Sándor Faggyas dismisses President Macron’s effort to relaunch the idea of an integrated Europe as a damped down version of his own earlier proposals. The columnist compares Macron’s roadmap for Europe to La Fontaine’s famous fable about mountains going into labour and giving birth to a mouse. The French President did put forward controversial solutions as well, like a joint budget within the Euro-zone, but Faggyas doubts whether Mrs Merkel’s probable coalition partners will accept them. The freshly re-elected German Chancellor could join Mr Macron in his endeavour, he explains, but she has been weakened by Sunday’s elections. Faggyas thinks Mr Macron had better read the results of his own electoral defeat this very Sunday, when his party which won an absolute majority in the National Assembly last spring, only came in third in the contest for seats in the Senate. The question is, Faggyas concludes, whether the new French President will be able to acknowledge the shift in European public opinion which now increasingly prioritizes security, law and order, national sovereignty and identity over ‘pseudo-humanistic demagoguery, utopian empire-building and vocal reformer-gobbledygook’.
Tags: EU, Macron, Merkel
