Emmanuel Macron this week hosts world leaders in his last G7 summit as French president, feeling that Donald Trump’s second mandate has vindicated his dream of a stronger Europe but with that vision far from being fulfilled.
Then a fresh-faced former banker still shy of his 40th birthday, Macron came to power in 2017 short on political experience but big on ideas, one of which was that Europe should gain strategic autonomy and be less reliant on the United States.
Macron most famously articulated his vision at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos where, wearing aviator sunglasses due to an eye condition and punctuating his speech with the English phrase “for sure”, he said Europe needed to stand up to “bullies” and be “much stronger and more autonomous”.
Now into the final year of his presidency, Macron has a chance to push his vision at the meeting of the seven leading powers where Trump will sit down at the table with France’s top European allies, plus Canada and Japan.
“France holds the G7 presidency with a clear ambition – to restore the G7 as a forum for frank dialogue among major economies,” Macron said in Davos in January.
With Trump at centre stage at the G7 in Evian-les-bains, Macron will meet the US leader before the summit gets underway on Monday and then host him for dinner at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris on Wednesday.
Macron’s aides do not tire of claiming that Trump’s protectionist trade policies, American freelancing on the international stage and even threats to leave NATO have vindicated the French leader. His chief foreign policy advisor Emmanuel Bonne stated simply: “Macron was right.”
But far from seeing Macron’s vision implemented, Europe has largely played the role of bystander in the Iran crisis while only the most limited progress has been made towards assuming its own defence.
While Macron may have “won the battle of ideas”, he has only partially succeeded in translating his intuition into collective action to change Europe, said the former French diplomat Michel Duclos, a resident senior fellow at the Institut Montaigne.
“It’s true that we’re witnessing a conceptual victory for Macron,” said Duclos. But the former ambassador added: “In diplomacy, being right is sometimes less important than achieving operational results.”
The radical moves by the Trump administration – notably the threats to annex the Danish territory of Greenland – boosted Macron’s credibility while allies have also been impressed by bold initiatives such as sharing France’s nuclear deterrent.
“In terms of relations with the United States, Macron understood early on that Trump wasn’t an aberration of history but the manifestation of something much deeper,” added Rym Momtaz of Carnegie Europe.
However, “he didn’t know how, or wasn’t able, to convince his European partners quickly enough of the need for transformation.”
In the latest failure emblematic of Europe’s shortcomings, France and Germany last week said they had agreed to abandon the FCAS joint fighter jet programme dating back to 2017 due to disagreements between the companies involved.
Over the last decade, Macron has also been accused by critics of flip-flopping on key issues, notably moving after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine from a position of seeking rapprochement with Moscow to full-throated support of Kyiv.
He also went from being criticised for siding too much with Israel to infuriating the Israeli leadership by recognising a Palestinian state last year.
Domestic political instability has seen no less than five French prime ministers during his second mandate since 2022 and his flagship pension reform to ease long-term budget pressure has been shelved.
A European diplomat, who asked not to be named, said that the French leader is “one of the few to articulate a vision”.
But Macron also suffered from a “credibility problem” linked to “his political weakness” and budgetary setbacks in France, the diplomat added.
