🇫🇷Weekly Dispatch - Macron supports Ukraine
04 February 2024 - Macron fights to defend Ukraine "whatever it takes", a fight for consulting limits on local authorities, and Raphaël Glucksmann will lead the Parti Socialiste EP list
👋Hey guys, Julien here.
The French Dispatch is a reader-supported publication, and both our coverage of current affairs as well as our ability to bring you more news and information on the world around us are entirely funded by paid subscriptions and donations.
If you enjoy reading articles written by high-level experts, then make sure to support the publication by liking, subscribing, and sharing it with your friends and colleagues, and consider taking a paid subscription.
This week
🇺🇦Macron: We will “defend and support Ukraine whatever it takes”
💼Fight for consulting limits on local authorities
🌹Glucksmann to lead the Parti Socialiste EP list
🇺🇦Macron: We will “defend and support Ukraine whatever it takes”
We’re starting the week off hot today, with Emmanuel Macron visiting Sweden and reiterating an age-old statement: that Europe cannot eternally rely on the U.S.
With the 2024 U.S. presidential elections on the horizon, the polls continue to show that President Joe Biden is behind Donald Trump in most examples.
Not only this but with the Texan House Speaker, Mike Johnson, appearing to lead the charge on reducing the U.S. funding to support the Ukrainian war of survival against the Russian invasion, there’s an even greater need for the EU to step up to the plate.
Especially when those leading these efforts in the U.S. have received funding linked to Russia.
Anywho, back to Macron, the French president called on Europeans to find “innovative” ways of supporting Ukraine without U.S. support, once against fighting the line on Strategic Autonomy as he has been since he came into power.
“This is a decisive and testing moment for Europe. We must be ready to act to defend and support Ukraine whatever it takes and whatever America decides."
With an increasingly dangerous world, the constant hammering home of the message that Europe needs to be independent and guarantee its own safety has been a long-term effort of the French president, who appears to see the writing on the wall.
The trip to Sweden is a part of this long-term effort to ensure European independence, with France and Sweden being some of the largest arms producers in Europe and the world, alongside Germany, Spain, and Italy.
And it seems to have been a positive visit, as President Macron and Defence Minister Sébastien Lecornu left Stockholm with signed agreements to strengthen bilateral military ties.
As you remember, a lot of this sounds similar to comments he made regarding the need to act without American ‘leadership’ or support previously, notably when discussing the need for Europe to be able to make its own decisions on Taiwan.
That is, it’s what he said before Politico excited everybody by misrepresenting an interview and forcing me to spend 8 hours on a sunny Sunday to translate it myself and point out their grave “mistake” (totally not bitter about that, by the way guys)
Check it out below:
Ultimately, all of the speeches and decisions that Emmanuel Macron makes revolve around one key thing: the need for the EU to ensure its security.
His now near-eight-year crusade has ranged from vastly increasing production across the EU to pushing EU member states to find ways of slimming down the model bloat across all military equipment and ultimately reducing dependence on the US.
“Europe has been lucky to have America as a partner but we have to be lucid. Ukraine is part of the European continent, and whatever America decides, we have to take the right and bold decisions to support Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.”
While there is an evident need to defend the sovereignty of a democratic state such as Ukraine and prevent a Russian victory that would endanger Europe and NATO, this will ultimately always underpin the Macron doctrine.
💼Fight for consulting limits on local authorities
Moving on!
With the long-term investigations and dramas into the use of consulting firms, there have been continuous discussions regarding the use of these firms in public work and whether or not it is acceptable for any government to use them.
And so far, it seems like a decision has been made, and it’s not making the French Senate very happy.
It seems that this week, the French government and Assemblée National agreed that local authorities' use of consulting firms in areas with over 100,000 inhabitants should be regulated. This concerns regions, departments, municipalities, and inter-municipal entities.
Unfortunately, this has upset quite a few people, as you can imagine, with many claiming that this will lead to an increase in distrust in local authorities as well as more bureaucratic work.
However, it’s not the basic principle of regulating the use of consulting firms that has bothered people (or so they say), but rather the form it’s taken and how it’s been done.
To simplify it, the government put forward an amendment to a legal text initially adopted in the senate in October 2022, which only focused on the supervision of consulting services used by the French state. This was related to the reported explosion in costs linked to these services.
If memory serves me right, an initial amendment of this kind had been rejected in the previous process.
For example, take this statement by the Les Républicain deputy, Philippe Gosselin.:
“To put an end to any ambiguity, I repeat that Les Républicains do not reject the idea of controlling the use of local authorities by consulting firms … [however] … the situation is not at all comparable with that of the State … this way of wanting at all costs to push the door open with an amendment that comes out of a hat, when the provision had been refused previously, is the demonstration that everything is good for unravelling the text
This situation does raise several serious questions as the process around this continues: how much should states be able to rely on consulting services?
It’s no secret that the complexity of public services and the governance of the state continue to increase, and it’s no secret that the pressure is rising on those managing this day-to-day governance and service, no matter the level they’re at.
There is a strong argument for using these services to reduce the burden on administrators and hypothetically allow them to focus on the most important tasks they need to take care of.
But this then takes us to the question of how frequently they should and how much this should cost, and this is where the issue gets more complex. Just look at the reaction to the news that the French state had spent over €1 billion on these.
Spoiler: it wasn’t great, ladies and gentlemen.
Ultimately, the state is obligated to justify these actions and is responsible for ensuring that the public understands the necessity of this type of work, and this should be the case at all levels of governance.
🌹Glucksmann to lead the Parti Socialiste EP list
Moving to the left, the party’s national council has confirmed Raphaël Glucksmann’s leadership of the Parti Socialiste’s European Elections list, and it has caused some drama.
For those of you who don’t know, Glucksmann is a founding member of Place Publique. This movement was initially intended to unify the entirety of the left (without La France Insoumise), and he led a joint Place Publique - Parti Socialiste list in the 2019 elections.
And he may be about to do this again, as the near-300 members of the PS national council have agreed on the leadership of the list, with what appears to have been a near 60% majority in favour.
However, this list now needs to be voted on February 8 by socialist activists, with ratification required on February 10 during their Europe convention.
However, the ongoing issue now is who will take the majority of the ten seats the PS expects to win based on current polling (around 8-10%, depending on the poll), with Place Publique and the PS negotiating who will be on the ballot.
Unfortunately for them, the ongoing dramas of the PS aren’t making it easy. PS Refondations, linked to Anne Hidalgo and Carole Delga, are unhappy with how their internal movement has been represented. They not only voted against Glucksmann but are currently arguing against a “game of internal arrangements”, as Delga has put it.
Not only this, but Faure is under increasing pressure from outside, with La France Insoumise having done everything they could to bully the other parties in their loose coalition to form another list under them.
However, the problem that Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Mathilde Panot have is that they have effectively caused so much carnage in the Assemblée National and in public and have damaged their ties with the other parties to the point that those who formed a coalition with them out of a need for survival are very happy to get rid of them.
But that’s a story for another dispatch and a polling update in the near future!
Thank you for reading the French Dispatch! If you liked what you read, you should like this post and subscribe to the newsletter by clicking/tapping the button below:
And if you’d like to contribute a coffee or two to help fuel my coverage of the wild world of politics, feel free to click on the picture below:
I was actually unaware that he was in Stockholm until some days ago. Because this Monday, I actually did a video interview for AFP so their reporter told me that the video with me is delayed due to covering Macron's visit.
In general, I do not think there is a need for more bilateral or multilateral agreements about military and security in the EU, I mean agreements between the governments. What is necessary is to integrate politics and market-regulation as regarding weapons, military, peace operations etc. But to be honest, I very biased due to my Eurofederalist background x)