It is nothing if not bold. Battered by the gilets jaune movement, challenged by populists, and with a flat-lining economy that may soon be in a full-blown recession, France’s President Macron has proposed a huge extension of the EU’s powers for the 2020s. His plans include common border controls, an agency for defending democracy, and a raft of new powers to allow Brussels to beef up its control of the economy. It is, to use the traditional phrase, ‘More Europe’. The trouble is, ‘More Europe’ is also increasingly a ‘Poor Europe’. What the EU really needs right now is some economic wins – but Macron’s plans are only going to make the economy even worse.
With the British on the way out, the EU is taking a dramatically more statist turn with every month that passes. The Germans have already converted to an active industrial policy, picking winners, subsidising ‘national champions’ and closing the borders to foreign competitors, especially if they make the mistake of being Chinese.
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