There is a void at the core of Europe and it comes at a critical time. Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron, the leaders of the two most powerful countries, are today politicians with waning influence and at the head of divided governments. The political survival of both is unknown. The continent faces decisive months in the war in Ukraine, and the hypothesis of a return to power in the United States of Donald Trumpwith two lame ducks in front of Germany and France.
The effects are felt inside and outside European borders. For months now, the European Union has been suffering from the short circuits of the Franco-German engine, the relationship that has driven the community club for decades, but which has been damaged for years. Now, in addition to the weakness of the governments of the two largest partners, there is the blow inflicted on them by the extreme right in the European elections in June. All this, with a delicate geopolitical horizon and what some leaders consider an existential crisis.
“Europe is very poorly organized to react to events in the West and the East,” says François Heisbourg, advisor to the analysis center Foundation for Strategic Research, and author of A world without America just published in French (edited by Odile Jacob). Heisbourg alludes to the US elections of November 5 and the difficulties of Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression. “There is a link between the two,” he clarifies, and refers to the possibility that Trump will withdraw support for the attacked country and seek an agreement with Vladimir Putin: “If Ukraine suffers major setbacks or comes under strong pressure from a Trump-Putin couple, it is clear that the Europeans would have problems.”
France and Germany are not in good shape. Neither does the Netherlands, with a coalition government led by the extreme right. And there is turbulence in Poland, with clashes between the conservative government of Donald Tusk and the ultra-conservative president Andrzej Duda. This “slows down” debates in the Twenty-Seven on issues such as the European defense model, and where to get funding to develop it, says a veteran diplomat. And, with the Franco-German power stagnant, the Italian far-right Giorgia Meloni is advancing, who leads one of the most stable governmentsis rising as the dominant voice on immigration matters, and sets the agenda of an increasingly right-wing community club, the diplomat continues.
France, the EU’s leading geopolitical and military power, has a president without a parliamentary majority since the early legislative elections last June, with a far right stronger than ever and a reduced capacity for maneuver at home and abroad. He has two and a half years left in his term until the next presidential elections, in which he cannot run again. This, assuming that he does not end up resigning due to the difficulties of governing. Before, in any case, there may be new legislation and a new change of Government. Macron fits the definition, common in the United States, of lame duck: the president who still holds office, but with reduced power because he has no prospects of continuing.
In Germany, Europe’s leading economic power, the social democratic chancellor leads a coalition with environmentalists and liberals who has one year left in his mandate, but it is not entirely certain that he will exhaust it, nor that he will continue in office. The polls predict a setback for Scholz and his unpopular Government. The economy declines for the second consecutive year and in the Executive the diagnoses and recipes to get out of the morass – one, social democratic; another, liberal – are contradictory: there is no lowest common denominator.
Volatility and paralysis
In France, “volatility” dominates, according to Heisbourg; in Germany, “paralysis.” “The causes of impotence are different,” summarizes the expert, “but the result is identical.” Both countries are facing budget debates these weeks that could determine the future of their governments. In Berlin and Paris there is a shared sense of exhaustion and waiting for the next elections or changes in leadership.
“Neither government is in good shape, that’s it,” says German MP Nils Schmid, foreign policy spokesman for Scholz’s Social Democratic Party in the Bundestag. “But both governments,” he specifies, “can still decide a lot.” Schmid defends that, although “the atmosphere is not good”, this is common in German coalitions, and adds that the current one is “stable”: “It will govern until the end of the legislature”, in September 2025. “France will “is in a more difficult situation than Germany,” says Schmid, with a government without a majority and public accounts with a high deficit. Unlike Macron, Scholz can run again, so it can be said that he is not technically a lame ducksince it is not written whether or not he will be re-elected. “The federal government has total capacity to maneuver,” he says.
In France, the three years left before the elections can become very long for the head of state, whom the political class and citizens are beginning to see as an amortized leader. Old pupils or trusted former prime ministers, such as Édouard Philippe or Gabriel Attal, are now beginning to run as candidates for the 2027 elections; The race to succeed Macron has already begun and accentuates the duck’s lameness.
The surprise dissolution in June of the National Assembly and The results of the elections that accompanied it certified the decline of Macronism and the President of the Republic himself. Macron faces a volcanic end to his mandate without stability that even guarantees his own continuity.
The configuration of Parliament, deeply divided, has ended up reinforcing the leader of the extreme right, Marine Le Pen, as well as her party, National Rally, which has become the judge who will determine the fate of the Executive and, incidentally, from Macron himself. Le Pen was far from the majority in the elections and, however, she is today the one who raises or lowers her thumb in major decisions.
The French president – challenged even in his party by the right-wing movement towards which the Executive has leaned, ignoring the victory of the leftist New Popular Front coalition in the elections – has decided to step aside and focus on international and defense issues. . However, even in that area, There have already been some friction with the Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, interested in personally dealing with some European affairs.
In this EU with the two major governments weakened, The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has taken the opportunity to reformulate the structures of her second term and gain more power, says a high-ranking community source.. In Brussels they are working one year ahead, with an eye on the German elections that could keep the Union blocked for months, at a time when progress must be made in the negotiation of the next budgets. And then, in 2027, the French presidential elections.
Too much time for a fast-paced world? Too much for a Europe with weak leaders in Paris and Berlin? A vacuum that leaders more to the right can fill? “Today (Paris and Berlin) are not in a position to provide impulses,” summarizes Heisbourg. “If France and Germany are out of the game, Europe does not work.”
