A tide of Euroscepticism is sweeping France

Britons should be fearful of Tony Blair’s call to the Labour party to ‘reset’ relations with the EU. The former prime minister has advised Keir Starmer that if he wins the general election he must build a closer political partnership with Brussels. Blair told the Sunday Times this was vital in order for the UK to once more be part of ‘the big political union on our own continent’.

In France, there is a growing suspicion that the EU is on the brink of what Blair, and his Gallic protegee, Emmanuel Macron, have long dreamed of: a United States of Europe.

In an interview in 2014, Blair was asked why Europeans would want to subjugate the interests of their own nation and their unique cultures for a United Europe. ‘It’s in the individual nation’s interests to come together so that their economies are stronger, so we can trade more with each other and we can wield more power,’ replied Blair.

This week, in France, 50 prominent Eurosceptic intellectuals called for a referendum on the question of greater European integration. Among the signatories to the letter, published in Le Figaro, were philosophers, historians, professors, politicians (past and present) and senior civil servants. They represent the breadth of the political spectrum, from Arnaud Montebourg, minister of the economy in the Socialist government of Francois Hollande, to Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, a friend of Nigel Farage and ally of Marine Le Pen, and the leader of the Sovereigntist party, France Arise.

In the letter they expressed concern at the European parliament’s proposal – driven by Germany and France – last November to make qualified majority voting the general rule. They claim this will further erode French sovereignty by handing more power to Brussels. ‘The definitive disconnection between the peoples and the European machinery will make national leaders less accountable and increase nationalist reactions tenfold, at the risk of leading us into chaos,’ stated the letter.

Le Figaro agreed with the signatories’ position. ‘Year after year, the motto “United in diversity” has given way to a centralising uniformity that erases national identities and sovereignty,’ said the paper. ‘Turning its back on what it was founded on, the Union has become a straitjacket of norms…a “people’s prison’ based on blind dogmas that cannot be questioned despite their obvious and dramatic economic, social and geopolitical failures.’

This is a significant volte-face by the centre-right Le Figaro. Back in 2005, when the French people were asked in a referendum to vote on the EU constitution, they like the rest of the media, were solidly behind Brussels.

If Le Figaro is a relatively recent convert to Euroscepticism, some of the 50 signatories have railed against Brussels for years, notably the left-wing philosopher Michel Onfray, and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan. Their principal domestic adversary is Emmanuel Macron, a president whose only strong political conviction is his belief in European federalism. He has many allies within Europe’s elite. Last year, 32 venerable political European figures – among them ex-EU commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and former Italian PMs Romano Prodi and Mario Monti – issued a manifesto in which they said that with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, ‘the time has come to acknowledge that nationalism is contrary to the national interest, that Member States’ national sovereignty is ineffective unless it is redefined in terms of European sovereignty’. Their solution is a ‘gradual and pragmatic federalism’.

Another signatory to the manifesto was a close ally of Macron’s, Pierre Moscovici, who in 2020 was appointed by the president the inaugural chief of France’s National Audit Office. Macron’s strategy to accomplish ‘pragmatic federalism’ is by fear; using the war in Ukraine to warn Europeans that Putin can only be beaten by a Europe that acts as one in all areas.

In a lengthy speech at the Sorbonne on Thursday the president raised the possibility that Europe could ‘die’ because it was ‘not armed against the risks we face’ in a volatile world. But Macron ended on a positive note: ‘We can regain control of our destiny through the power, prosperity and sovereignty of our Europe. The best way to know the future, when the unexpected is there, is to make promises that you keep’.

Macron’s speech was also seen as an attempt to give some much-needed impetus to his party’s candidate in the European elections, Valerie Hayer, who trails the frontrunner, the Eurosceptic Jordan Bardella of the National Rally, by 15 points in the polls.

The figurehead of the National Rally, Marine Le Pen, has also been talking about ‘destiny’ this week. On a visit to Mayotte in the Indian Ocean, a French Department, Le Pen stressed the importance of voting in the European elections because ‘they will determine the freedom of the French to decide our destiny’. It was almost as if she had borrowed her rhetoric from Nigel Farage. ‘Countries will be happier if they are self-governing, if people are the masters of their own destiny,’ said Farage during campaigning for the Brexit referendum.

There is no chance that Macron will ever agree to a referendum on Europe; as he admitted to the BBC in a 2018 interview, the French would ‘probably’ have done the same as the British and voted to leave the EU if given the chance.

This is another similarity that the president shares with Tony Blair. Twenty years ago this week, Blair announced that Britain would have a referendum on the EU constitution. ‘Let the battle be joined,’ he bullishly told parliament.cBut the following year French and Dutch voters rejected the constitution in referendums and Blair, aghast at the prospect of suffering a similar humiliation, shelved the idea of a British vote.

Not that the British result would have mattered. The EU ignored the democratic wish of the French and Dutch electorate and ratified the constitution. That’s why so many French scoff when their president boasts of an EU that keeps its promises.