Articles:
European politics in 2017

For day-to-day drama, the eyes of the world in 2017 will of
course be focused on the new American president, at least during his early
months in office. But for longer-term impact on geopolitics and the global
economy, Europe will be at least as important. For European politics will be
the venue in which the next phase of the global populist revolt will be played
out. And Europe, along with its close neighbour Turkey, will be the region most
vulnerable to political influence by terrorism.

                  The
reason for Europe’s importance is essentially economic, but geography also
comes into play. Except for the United Kingdom, Sweden and Denmark, all three
of which have stayed out of the euro single currency, the advanced, developed
countries of the European Union have suffered from very slow recoveries from
the 2008 global financial crisis, which has left unemployment rates high and
citizens frustrated.

                  Germany
is another exception: its unemployment rate, at 4.3% of the workforce on OECD
figures in December 2016, is less than half the euro-zone overall rate of 10%
and well below those in France (10.1%), Italy (11.6%), Spain (19.2%) or Greece
(23%). But as the chief creditor nation to the single currency’s biggest
debtors, the mood in Germany has been depressed by overall euro-zone stagnation
and by political divisions inside the EU over both economic policy and migration.

                  The
geographical importance arises from the EU’s position alongside Russia, and
along the northern coast of a Mediterranean Sea of which Turkey makes up the
eastern coast, and Syria, Libya, Tunisia and other North African and Middle
Eastern countries the southern coast. So tensions over Russia spread deeply
inside European politics, as do concerns over flows of refugees and economic
migrants from North Africa, over terrorism by Islamic State and its
sympathisers, and the political instability of Turkey.

                  Finally,
on top of all these geopolitical, economic and security issues there is also
the issue of Brexit – the decision in last June’s referendum by the UK to
become the first country ever to leave the European Union. Negotiations over
the terms and speed of Brexit are expected to be launched in late March when
the UK government triggers the process for leaving laid down in Article 50 of
the EU’s Lisbon Treaty.

                  Brexit
will not dominate European politics directly during 2017, even though it will
naturally dominate British politics. But it will be a factor, a shadow, hanging
over all the other issues in European politics and governance, including the
completion of the Japan-EU Economic Partnership Agreement but also migration,
relations with Russia, economic policy and more.

                  The
central, dominating issue in European politics, at least in the first half of
the year will not be Brexit, nor Germany, nor Russia, but France. By which I
mean that the decisive event, which all other governments will be waiting for,
will be the French Presidential and Parliamentary elections that take place in
April, May and June.

                   This will take Europe back, in some senses, to
the era of General Charles de Gaulle, France’s wartime leader in exile and
later its president. He always felt that France must play a central role in
Europe. De Gaulle wasn’t really a collaborative believer in European
solidarity. After all, he notoriously held the young European Community to
ransom in the mid-1960s by boycotting meetings in order to foster his own
vision of an intergovernmental, rather than supranational, Europe. He was what
Donald Trump might call a “France Firster”. But still, he wanted Europe to make
France more powerful in the world, which is about to happen, again.

                  One
reason is well known: the possibility, shocking even that it can be called a
possibility, that the Front National’s Marine Le Pen could be elected president
in May. Who hasn’t heard the gloomy, speculative logic? That after Brexit and
Trump, the next blow to rational predictions and conventional wisdom, the next
victory of populism, must be President Le Pen?

                  If
that were to happen, the European Union would be for the scrapheap. Unlike
Trump, Ms Le Pen has been in politics for 20 years already and her policy
positions have a consistency that means they have to be taken seriously: she
would want France to rebuild trade barriers, leave the euro and restrict
immigration tightly, none of it compatible with the EU as we know it. And she
really means it. The process of breaking up the EU, begun in a smaller way by
the Brexit vote in 2016, would start in earnest if she were to win.

                  Is
this actually going to happen? The French electoral system makes it difficult,
but not impossible. The president is elected in two rounds of voting: after the
first, in late April, if no single candidate holds more than 50% of the vote,
then the two leading candidates have to compete in a second round of voting, in
early May.

                  Current
opinion polls indicate that it is impossible for any candidate to win in the
first round. But they further indicate that Ms Le Pen will most probably be one
of the two candidates competing in the second round. The key question is
whether voters who have supported unsuccessful mainstream candidates in the
first round will then rally around whoever is competing with Ms Le Pen, as
happened when her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, reached the second round of the
presidential vote in 2001, or whether enough might choose her that she could
actually win. This is not thought likely – but neither was the victory of
Donald Trump.

                  The
result is that there is no point in any EU country – Britain negotiating
Brexit, Italy contemplating a general election – taking serious action until
after the second round of France’s presidential poll has taken place on May 7^th.
The result is simply too important for all of us. But it is important also for
another reason, beyond fear of a President Le Pen.

                  The
French election will be influential also in the likelier case that Ms Le Pen
loses. In its 60 years of existence, the European Union has never made
progress, never been able to act credibly and decisively, except when the
governments of France and Germany have thought together, planned together and
worked together. During the five-year term of President Francois Hollande, this
Franco-German motor has ground to a halt. Neither side trusts the other, and
the Germans think President Hollande is weak and incapable.

                  Without
that Franco-German motor, management of Europe’s multiple crises has been
disastrously slow, ineffective and divisive. Yet the interests of France and
Germany are shared: the Berlin killings on December 19^th, just over
a year since the Bataclan massacre and five months on from an identical truck
attack in Nice, showed that the two countries face the same terrorist threat;
having conceived the euro together when Presidents Kohl and Mitterrand were in
full co-operation during the 1990s, they share a deep interest in making the
currency system work; and with America potentially turning hostile to Europe
under President Trump, they need each other more than ever in geopolitics.

                  If
the much likelier outcome of France’s presidential election in May occurs,
namely a victory for the centre-right candidate Francois Fillon, the stage
would be set for a new era of Franco-German collaboration. Fillon, who is an
economic liberaliser but a social conservative, is far more compatible with Chancellor
Angela Merkel and especially with her Christian Democrat and Christian Social
Union party supporters, than has been President Hollande. He would even stand a
chance of convincing Merkel and the German parliament to relax the tight fiscal
constraints that have been holding euro-zone economies back.

                  The
one shadow over this probable Franco-German rapprochement is Russia. While
Chancellor Merkel has led the EU’s policy of sanctions against Russia following
its annexation of Crimea and support for the war in Ukraine, Mr Fillon has
spoken in favour of closer, friendlier relations with Russia. This may not be a
policy he will stick to if he becomes president. But it is a potential source
of division – unless President Trump has already led the way in abandoning
sanctions on Russia by the time Mr Fillon is elected.

                  Another
complicating factor could be Turkey. French policy towards Turkey and its
candidacy to join the EU has been more hostile and negative than German policy.
Chancellor Merkel led the way in negotiating a multi-billion euro deal with
Turkey to try to stop the flow of refugees from Syria through Turkey into the
Balkans. But the crackdown by Turkey’s government on dissent and opposition
since a failed military coup last July, and now exacerbated by Islamic State
terrorism in Istanbul, could increase French suspicion of Turkey and its human
rights record.

                  Nevertheless,
despite all those caveats, the chance is there and is good that after the
French election a far better Franco-German relationship will be able to
re-emerge. Its full benefit may not be seen until Germany itself has its
general election in September, when Mrs Merkel will be competing for her fourth
term in office. But after then, there is a chance that the EU could genuinely
begin to move in a more positive and constructive direction.

                  The
key dangers surrounding this hope, in France as in the Netherlands, which has a
general election in March, and in Italy, whenever its election takes place,
arise from the combination of high unemployment, stagnant household incomes and
fear of immigration. The latter issue is also a danger for Mrs Merkel in the
German election.

                  Hillary
Clinton’s problem was that she represented too closely the American
establishment that had brought the 2008 financial crash and then had failed to
oversee an equitable recovery from it. Brexit is a very different case, given
Britain’s long history of semi-detachment from Europe, but it still can be
explained by alienation from the powers-that-be, which crucially included a
Europe that, thanks to the loss of the Franco-German motor, now looked like a
problem rather than any sort of a solution.

                  To
win the argument during 2017, political parties and intellectuals that favour
open, liberal societies and European collaboration will have to show that they
offer more hope for the future of citizens of all ages than do the advocates of
closure and of rejecting Europe, such as Le Pen and the Netherlands’ Geert
Wilders.

That means that they will need to
convince voters that they can make Europe work again, make it part of the
solution for national ailments rather than a problem in itself. Above all, however,
they will need to convince voters that they can restore national economic
dynamism, removing obstacles to growth and to the creation of jobs.

Francois Fillon is a good person to
lead this argument, since he is capable of appealing both to young voters who
want jobs and opportunities and to older voters worried about traditional
French values. Both the other two mainstream candidates, Manuel Valls of the
left and Emmanuel Macron as an independent, also have the chance to inspire the
young, though as former members of President Hollande’s administration they are
also tainted by recent failure.

Mrs Merkel herself will gain more
confidence in making this argument in her September election if either Mr
Fillon or Mr Valls – but preferably her fellow centre-right political leader,
Fillon – is by then France’s president.

The stakes, for Europe and for the
world, could not be higher.