As Germany’s influence wanes, Emmanuel Macron emerges as Europe’s most important national leader, driving France’s vision for a unified continent amidst global turmoil.
Is Macron Striving for a New Leadership Role for Europe?
Emmanuel Macron has taken on a leadership mantle for European priorities, as well as those of France. He is driving France’s vision of Europe amid war to its east and incoming tariffs across the Atlantic.
Emmanuel Macron is a French politician who served as the President of France from 2017 to 2022.
He rose to prominence after leading the En Marche! movement, which focused on economic and social reform.
Macron's presidency was marked by efforts to strengthen European integration and implement structural reforms in the French economy.
He also introduced policies aimed at reducing unemployment and increasing competitiveness.
For years, Germany had been seen as the leading light of Europe — both politically and economically powerful, with a figurehead in Angela Merkel who was instantly recognizable on the continent and internationally. Her retirement, however, has led to a comparatively unstable successor government, and the difficult passage through the economic turmoil of the COVID-19 pandemic have dimmed Germany’s European star.
Angela Merkel is a German politician who served as the Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021.
She was the first female leader of her country and the longest-serving chancellor since World War II.
Born on July 17, 1954, in Hamburg, Germany, Merkel studied physics at the University of Leipzig.
She entered politics in the late 1980s and rose through the ranks of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party.
Merkel's leadership focused on promoting European integration, climate action, and economic stability.
During her tenure, she played a key role in shaping the European Union's response to the eurozone crisis.
Across the border, Macron — no stranger to his own domestic political battles — has emerged as Europe’s most important national leader amid the global shocks wrought by the second Trump administration and its hostile posture towards traditional European allies. While Germany is expected to return to a ‘Grand Coalition’ led by Friedrich Merz and his center-right Union with a junior partner in the center-left Social Democrats, Europe’s most powerful economy is stuck with a caretaker government during Donald Trump‘s barrage of tariffs and the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
Macron has always been among the world’s most recognizable national leaders, but he has been particularly vocal amid current turmoil. He comfortably wears the hats of both French president and an ambassador for Europe. ‘He has a European message and this message is coordinated, but in the end, he’s the President of France,’ said Gesine Weber, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund specializing in European security.
The two roles are interlinked because most European interests are also French interests and vice versa. As European leaders scope out increased defense spending and even concepts of unified defense, Macron has gone as far as to put the expansion of France’s domestic nuclear shield back on the table, to the chagrin of Russia. In other areas of foreign policy, Macron has been trying to advance European interests along French lines: ‘Europe has become very French over the last five years,’ Weber points out.
Macron‘s incumbency and pre-existing relationship with Donald Trump uniquely position him to engage the United States. ‘He was the first head-of-state or government among Europeans that was able to establish — or reestablish — a relationship with Trump,’ says Weber.
With Macron being a ‘lame duck’ president, with limits on the French presidency limiting the role to two consecutive terms, he has just two years to realize his vision for France and Europe. Jacob Ross, a research fellow in Franco-German Relations at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), points to France’s traditional stance of thinking about its role — and Europe’s larger place in the world — autonomously, not through a US-centric lens.
However, France’s autonomous viewpoint isn’t enough for it to claim a standalone place as Europe’s quasi-leader. They are in a difficult position with regards to their sovereign debt situation, with very little room for maneuver in terms of expanding national budgets, including on defense. With regard to ideas, Macron takes leadership and has been doing so since 2017, but France lacks the material base to really put that forward on its own.
The rise of his former Euroskeptic presidential rival Marine Le Pen is another hurdle for Macron‘s pro-Europe vision. Both Ross and Weber say a singular Merkel-like European figure is less likely amid the fractious period of deteriorating relations with the US to the west, ongoing conflict with Russia to the east, and rising populists and far-right parties at home.
Amid Donald Trump‘s protectionist ‘America First’ doctrine and war on the continent, strengthening traditional alliances like the ‘E3’ France-Germany-Britain triumvirate may be the best bet for Europeans. The Franco-German dynamic will remain strong in the foreseeable future, at least in the next two years, according to Ross.
The French know that Macron‘s pro-European stance will be at risk beyond 2027, with the presidential election coming up. They’ll try to pressure the Germans into getting important steps done before 2027.
