Macron’s talked the talk on a participative Europe, but how can he walk the walk?
To have real impact on a European level, the French president first needs to empower his people
We certainly can’t fault President Macron for a lack of ambition. His recent call for profound transformation at the EU level, with the aim of winning back thousands of disgruntled citizens, clearly demonstrates his aspirations for the visionary founding ideas of a united Europe.
Macron was elected for his pro-European stance, directly contrasting Marine Le Pen’s Front National (her rise mirroring the far right populism that’s been seen across the world). The key to Macron’s victory? His ability to effectively garner support based on a platform of energy, and promises of citizen empowerment and government innovation.
Yes, his rhetoric of giving the EU back to its citizens is an admirable and important one, but if Macron wants to re-empower the continent he must, somewhat ironically, first look inward.
If the EU is to belong to its people, France must belong to those who inhabit it — not nationalistically, but in a way that focuses on connecting French citizens to the local, regional, and national policies affecting their lives.
Rather than focusing on EU-level reforms, which he has little practical potential to radically dynamize, Macron should harness the opportunity to revitalise civic participation at home. This would have three key benefits: first to serve as a campaign promise fulfilled. Secondly, to counter Le Pens criticisms of technocrats making decisions on behalf of you, and at your expense. And finally, it would serve as a key example of a major European country bridging the democratic deficit on a local level — something the EU could learn from.
While emotive, Macron’s rhetoric is sometimes illogical. He calls for a giving back of Europe, yet demands centralized EU policies with no mention of validating these policies with the citizens who would supposedly have had the EU returned to them. Start with democratic engagement and empowerment, not direct democracy or mob rule. We need an honest recognition of the positives and negatives of EU policies on local constituencies, and an openness to when an EU level embrace can act (even in the short term) at the expense of local interest.
We must remember that Le Pen’s rise did not come in a vacuum, and that Macron’s success hasn’t made these people’s concerns disappear: just ask the Americans and the Brits what ignoring upset minorities results in…
However, Macron hits the problem cleanly — that citizens (essentially in all western countries) feel disenfranchised by their government, both national and supranational, and this leads to them feeling disgruntled. He also recognises that the complete disconnect from citizens to Brussels decision-making only exacerbates this problem.
If anyone has a chance of addressing this, Macron, as one of the two de facto leaders of western civilization, does — and as a steady-hand conservative in her third term Merkel, is hardly poised for revolutionary ideas.
And there are certainly positive first steps.
The French government recently decentralised its education policy from the national to the regional level, and the city of Lyon has been actively engaging citizens in co-creating school class timings with thousands of citizens participating. They’re being constructively engaged, rather than passively heard, making them less disgruntled by being involved in policies that usually come on high, for the first time.
Macron has referred to Europe as ‘too slow, too weak, too ineffective’.
But he realistically has little possibility of changing the machinery and culture in Brussels to make it either faster, stronger, or more effective. He can, however, affect its representativeness. People don’t dislike the EU because it’s slow, all government is slow, usually by design. They dislike it because they don’t feel part of it, that they were never asked, that they are so far removed from anyone they ever voted for. Making these people a part of local processes, as a model for more representative and direct European level participation, is a much more important (and achievable) goal.
If Macron succeeds in this — in empowering his local populace more strongly, providing the blueprint for a strong, united, but less patriarchal Europe — he will have perhaps created the strongest political legacy France has seen in a generation, greatly disable the arguments of skeptics, and maybe save Europe entirely.
