French president compared to De Gaulle as he seeks to get on with mission to change EU

Emmanuel Macron’s tough-guy stance at the EU summit – refusing the UK a much longer Brexit extension – was partly down to the French president’s personality, but his reasoning was political.

The 41-year-old, who stood for president without ever having run an election campaign then promised a grand plan to reform the European Union, is known for his impatience. He wants action. He likes to be centre stage.

But it was British commentators – not French – who crafted the General de Gaulle metaphors last week, saying Macron might say “non” to Theresa May’s Brexit extension request because he wanted to follow the great postwar leader who first vetoed Britain’s attempt to join the European Economic Community in 1963.

May finds a note of harmony in Brussels as Macron sings out of tune Read more

The Elysée had not gone that far. But in terms of the French electorate, it is never a bad thing for a president to be compared to De Gaulle. And after the metaphors had begun flying around, it was hard for Macron to reverse course.

“To have seemed to have stepped back would have had a political price, so the De Gaulle narrative was a constraint,” said Prof François Heisbourg, the chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “He would have had more of a political price to pay if he seemed too soft than too hardline.”

But what really lies behind Macron’s tough line is that Brexit is becoming a political problem in France. His grand plan to overhaul the EU, from the eurozone to Schengen, is already complicated enough to deliver – with little consensus in other capitals on a joint future project. Time is slipping away and a never-ending Brexit hogging the agenda would limit Macron’s ability to achieve any part of it.

Macron also fears the Brexit deadlock is poisoning the French European election campaign.

Macron enrages EU leaders after opposing long Brexit extension Read more

France’s vote for the European parliament on 26 May will define the young centrist president’s legacy and his future if he runs for a second term. It is another existential standoff between Macron – a pro-European, self-styled defender of progressive politics – and Marine Le Pen, a far-right nationalist and Eurosceptic. Macron’s side, narrowly in the lead, is running a campaign warning against the dangers of Euroscepticism. That’s why Macron has been the most outspoken European leader in slamming what he called the “lies” of the British leave camp.

French Euroscepticism is thriving – both on the left and on the right. French voters are highly critical of the EU, but they stop short of a British-style appetite to leave. So Le Pen’s stance has shifted – she does not advocate a full-blown Frexit, nor to leave the euro currency, and neither does the hard left. Instead, Le Pen wants to team up with other European far-right nationalists and wreak havoc inside the bloc.

When Macron explained as he arrived in Brussels that “we have a European renaissance to drive forward”, it was a reference to the renaissance slogan of his party’s European election campaign.

For Christian Lequesne, a professor at Paris’s Sciences Po, Macron’s tough stance in Brussels was both personal and political.

“First, there’s the question of temperament – Macron is someone of a certain impatience, which is different to Germany’s Angela Merkel, who likes to allow time for things to take shape,” he said.

“But the most important issue is that Macron has a political project for Europe, so he’s already thinking beyond the European elections. And he feels Brexit has dominated too much of the agenda. Now France wants to get on to more serious things like eurozone reform, which won’t be easy, and the EU’s relations with China. And ultimately, Brexit has become a factor in the political campaign between the pro-Europeans, represented by Macron, and the Eurosceptics on various fronts ... Brexit runs against the politics Macron wants to do.”

As soon as the summit was over, Macron’s candidates for the European parliament were hailing France for saving the EU from Brexit groundhog day.

Pascal Canfin, a former Green MEP, now running for the European parliament for Macron’s centrist group, told French TV: “I must stress that thankfully France was there that night to say: ‘We don’t want an infinite extension.’”