As the former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger once apocryphally asked: “Who do I call if I want to call Europe?” Over the subsequent decades, the best available answer has, of course, varied. But today it is surely: Emmanuel Macron. He has occupied the Élysée Palace for five years and has big, deeply thought-through ideas about the future of Europe. Newly re-elected and thus secure in office until 2027, he roams the continent and the globe seeking out thorny issues to solve. Macron lost his legislative majority in June, and so, like a domestically weakened Tony Blair long before him, he is now turning to the world stage with even more vigour.
In recent weeks Macron has launched the European Political Community (EPC), a forum for European political and strategic discussion; convened peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan; unveiled a plan to overhaul France’s armed forces by 2030; reset his country’s Africa policy; advocated a “single global order” transcending US-China tensions at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Bangkok; held talks on the war in Ukraine with China’s Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Bali; and secured a green light for Europe’s biggest-ever common defence project. On 29 November he arrived in Washington DC for the first state visit of Joe Biden’s presidency. His sheer hyperactivity is something to behold. The historian Timothy Garton Ash has, if somewhat tongue in cheek, compared him to “Jacques-Louis David’s heroic picture of Napoleon Crossing the Alps on a prancing white steed, one arm outstretched to point the way onward and upward”.
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