The EU’s new emperor: what would Macron’s second term look like?

Emmanuel Macron, with eagle eyes, is staring at Europe like stout Cortez. Elected president of France almost five years ago aged just 39, he dreams beyond the renewal of his lease on the Élysée Palace in the April election. Now Angela Merkel has left the world stage, Macron’s ambition is to replace her as Europe’s de facto leader and to father a European federation, a United States of Europe, with France and himself at its centre.

On New Year’s Day, France assumed the rotating six-month presidency of the European Council, the supreme institution of the European Union, an organisation some might think besieged by unresolved crises and policy conflicts and perhaps best advised to be modest. Unabashed, Macron served up an amuse-bouche of what his vision might mean for France, for Europe, for Britain and for the world.

He lit up the Eiffel Tower in the EU colours (also the French embassy in London), ordered a gigantic EU flag to be flown at the Arc de Triomphe and went on television to devote a large part of his New Year’s Eve discourse to his fellow citizens to declare 2022 ‘a turning point’ for a Europe ‘more sovereign and more powerful’.