Macron Seizes Opportunities To Become 'Europe's Foremost Leader'

Why Macron has turned his focus to foreign policy

ZAID M. BELBAGI

While French President Emmanuel Macron’s first term was characterized by the ambitious young leader’s standoffs with unions and interest groups as he sought to enact his reform agenda, his second term is markedly more international in its focus. 

Having made 30 international visits since his reelection in April, Macron is more likely to be seen by the French people in media reports of his globetrotting than among them, seeking to reorder French society. Despite being the first president to win reelection in 20 years, Macron is outnumbered in a parliament that could vote against his plans, leaving him looking overseas to make his mark.

Macron has always been clear that his intention is to reshape a sluggish French state, which has been overburdened by social spending and is increasingly overlooked abroad. His party having lost its absolute majority in parliament, Macron faces opposition from interest groups and the left with regards to his domestic plans, alongside a constant pummeling from the right as to his globalist tendencies.

Within this context, Macron has launched into shuttle diplomacy, attending his second state dinner at the White House and then seeking a middle path between Iran and its Arab neighbors in Amman, while stopping to scoop up the limelight at Qatar’s World Cup final in between. The president seems indefatigable, with visits to India and Japan and another to the US already in the offing for 2023.

 Aside from having promised to reinvent the French state, revitalize its economy and change the country’s social makeup, Macron hoped to build “useful international cooperation that prevents war and addresses our current challenges; and to build a much stronger Europe, the voice, strength and principles of which can carry weight in this reformed framework.”

There are few areas of global diplomacy where the French president has not suggested his own new ideas in recent months. 

Zaid M. Belbagi

“Macron 2.0” has sought to use the growing multipolarity of international affairs and the retirement of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to pursue a more robust foreign policy.

 In Europe, Macron is building a 44-nation “European Political Community.” Having met in October in Prague and due to next meet in Moldova in the spring, the intergovernmental forum is a clear affront to a Russia that Macron once sought to engage with. As much as it concerns Moscow, the group is actually an effort by Macron to encourage European independence from Washington.

There are few areas of global diplomacy where Macron has not suggested his own new ideas in recent months, from global hunger to containing Russia. Having clearly taken the opportunity to present himself as Europe’s foremost leader, the president who now lacks a parliamentary majority at home is said to be angling for an international job after his term finishes.