Why Europe's leadership is at pivot point

By Andrew Hammond

While much on the agenda in Brussels for the end-of-week summit of Europe's 27 prime ministers and presidents is familiar, there is a historic power shift underway in the club of continental leaders that could bring about significant changes in 2022.

For the summit on Thursday and Friday is likely the last one for now-caretaker German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Moreover, her close collaborator, French President Emmanuel Macron, is about to face an intense election campaign which could yet see him lose power in the spring.

While the Franco-German alliance has long been the motor of European integration, cooperation between the two powers ebbs and flows depending upon the office holders in Berlin and Paris. Merkel and Macron have not seen eye-to-eye on every issue, yet over the last half decade they have been a formidable duo plotting the future of the EU.

Key achievements include persuading squabbling fellow members last year to agree to give the bloc, for the first time in its history, debt-raising powers to finance a 750 billion euro post-coronavirus recovery plan. The pair were also key too to getting the post-Brexit U.K.-EU trade deal over the line last December too.

Despite the striking differences between them, both are extraordinary politicians with an eye on their legacies. Since his remarkable rise to power, Macron for instance has emerged as one the most authoritative defenders of the liberal international order. His victory in 2017 against far-right National Front candidate Marine Le Pen was striking as he held the political center ground and defied the march of populism, post-Brexit and Trump.

Macron potentially aside, Merkel has long been the most important political leader in continental Europe having been in office since 2005. Now into overtime at the end of her fourth term, in terms of length of tenure she sits behind only Otto von Bismarck, who served for almost two decades from 1871 to 1890, during a period in which he was a dominant force in European affairs having helped previously drive unification of Germany.

Both Merkel and Macron believe that Europe is now, a century and a half after Bismarck's time, in another critical period in its history. Despite progress made, key challenges remain, including a growing backlash to Brussels across the continent, including in Poland.

In this context, there still remain a multitude of views on the future of the Brussels-based club. And this week's summit will be another key opportunity to shape this debate. Scenarios range from the EU retreating, post-Brexit, to no more than the current economic single market which seeks to guarantee freedom of movement of goods, capital, services and people.

At the other end of the spectrum, however, is a quite different future where the remaining 27 member states decide to do much more together, reigniting European integration which is favored by Macron if he can win a second term.

Of the wide-ranging scenarios, probably the most likely to be realized is a broad continuation of the status quo. This would see the EU muddling through from where it is today and seeking to deliver on the Bratislava Declaration agreed just weeks after the Brexit referendum, including better tackling migration and border security, plus beefing up external security and defense.

However, further setbacks ― which are likely in the next few years ― could instead see a retreat. This could see the current scale of EU functions rolled back with attention and limited resources focused instead more on a smaller number of policy areas, including the single Market. One of the potential triggers for this could be further tension between Brussels and key Eastern European states, especially Poland and Hungary.

Only last week, Poland's Constitutional Tribunal ruled that key articles of one of the EU's primary treaties were incompatible with Polish law, in effect rejecting the principle that EU law has primacy over national legislation in certain judicial areas, and France and Germany perceive a "Polexit" may now be a real risk.

Yet, if Macron were to win big next year and form a strong relationship with Merkel's successor, it remains possible that the EU could follow a different pathway of deepening cooperation with states sharing more power and resources, with decisions agreed faster and enforced much more quickly. A re-elected Macron would, for instance, push hard for the creation of a European Defence Union which has assumed new importance for him since the announcement last month of the U.S.-U.K.-Australia security deal.

While the direction of the EU is still so uncertain, what is clear is that the new leaders in Berlin and possibly Paris too will have a huge bearing on events. The next few months could therefore have an outsized impact in defining the economic and political character of the bloc not just well into the 2020s, but potentially well beyond.

Andrew Hammond (andrewkorea@outlook.com) is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.