It was a moment to cherish, not to spoil. But I wasn’t the only one at the grand Charlemagne prize ceremony for Emmanuel Macron in Aix-la-Chapelle last week to wonder if the French President has already accepted that the federalist game is up. The medal is awarded for services to the cause of European unification, a cause that Macron has done his best to advance. But first the Brits bailed out. Then the Hungarians and Poles dissented. Now Italy looks set to become the first of the EU’s six founding states with a government abandoning the federalist project.
Angela Merkel and her German conservatives had poured cold water on Macron’s idea of a massive shake-up involving a single finance minister for the eurozone. And Italy has handed the final blow to Macron’s plan. A coalition between the Five Star Movement and the Lega looks set to flaunt all the rules of European orthodoxy — and lay the idea of euro federalism to rest.
Lega and the Five Star both want to rip up EU rules on the budget deficit.
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