Emmanuel Macron’s trip to Poland on February 3 and 4 had great repercussions in Poland. Less so in France, although most media outlets published a few reports about what was the first visit of a French president to Poland since 2013. A previous visit, planned by President François Hollande in 2016, was cancelled after the government of Beata Szydło decided not to go forward with the purchase of 50 French-made Caracal military helicopters. The relationship between Poland and France further worsened when Emmanuel Macron, who used to be Minister of the Economy under President Hollande, made Poland and Hungary his target in the presidential campaign of 2017. In an effort to discredit his main adversary, the leader of the National Rally (RN) Marine Le Pen, Macron claimed in early May 2017 that Le Pen’s friends were the regimes of Orbán, Kaczyński and Putin, and that these were not regimes with an open, free democracy, but rather regimes where “many liberties, and together with them our values, are ignored on a daily basis”. Later, as president of France, Emmanuel Macron went on to criticise Poland and Hungary’s democratically elected leaders in similar terms. For example, when on a visit to Slovakia in October 2018, the French president talked of Poland and Hungary as being led by “crazy minds” “lying to their peoples”. The least that can be said is that such words do not fit with normal relations between nations, and in particular between nations which are supposed to be European Union and NATO partners.
The turning point in Macron’s attitude towards Hungary and Poland came in October last year, when the French president unexpectedly invited Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to the Élysée Palace for lunch. The Hungarian and French media were not informed beforehand of the planned meeting in Paris. Orbán made the trip to Paris, and the two leaders held private talks for over two hours instead of one hour as scheduled. This was the first time President Macron and Prime Minister Orbán had a real opportunity for such face-to-face discussions. It was at a time when both France and Hungary had seen their candidates for the European Commission rejected in the European Parliament. Surprisingly, it appeared from the discussions held in Paris that the two leaders actually shared common views on many issues in spite of their well-known differences, such as on the subject of immigration. Shared views concerned the project for a common European defence system and even for a future European army, the need to improve relations with Russia, and their approach to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), an area in which both countries are resisting calls to cut EU spending. Regarding defence, Hungary bought 36 Caracal helicopters in 2018 and, just like France, it is committed to reaching the NATO threshold of 2% of GDP. In a press point held before their face-to-face meeting, both leaders stressed the need for talks and cooperation between eastern and western EU member states.
Four months later, when the French president met his Polish counterpart as well as Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in Warsaw, he also adopted more conciliatory tones than in the past. The main subjects of discussions were European defence, energy and the climate. Discussions were also held at ministerial level between French and Polish ministers for foreign affairs, defence, the environment and the economy, as well as with business leaders who accompanied President Macron on his trip to Poland. A Franco-Polish Declaration on cooperation in European matters was signed, calling for the development of common European defence policies within the framework of NATO, and supporting European plans towards climate neutrality by 2050, while stressing the need for a “Just Transition Mechanism” with funds to help countries like Poland which rely heavily on fossil fuels for their energy production. The joint declaration signed in Warsaw also mentions the prospect of Franco-Polish cooperation were Poland to build nuclear power plants in its efforts to phase out coal, as well as the desirability of Franco-Polish cooperation at EU level to promote new European economic, fiscal and industrial policies. When talking to the press in Warsaw, Emmanuel Macron tried to reassure his Polish partners after his remarks on the brain death of NATO and the need to renew dialogue with Russia: European defence is intended to be the European pillar of NATO and not to replace the alliance with the United States, and France is neither pro-Russian nor anti-Russian, but pro-European, he said. It was also stressed during Macron’s visit that Poland and France share common interests and views regarding the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy. Poland is all the more important to France in that area given that the EU commissioner for agriculture is a Pole.
Before Macron’s arrival, some Polish media had raised the possibility of an agreement to send Polish soldiers to the Sahel region in Africa, where France is asking for European involvement, suggesting that in exchange France would give up its demands for the redistribution of asylum seekers at European level. However, this was not mentioned during press conferences and press releases after the meetings held in Warsaw.
A common European defence system is undoubtedly one of several fields where there is ground for common understanding between France and the Visegrád Four. The departure of the United Kingdom is going to bring about significant changes in the European Union. Although France intends to continue its military cooperation with the British after Brexit, it is now the only country left in the EU with a capacity to deploy forces on other continents. In this context, Poland, which is one of the few European countries to fulfil the NATO objective of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence, and which has ambitious plans to boost its military capacities in the coming years, could become a cornerstone of a future European defence system. Although in contrast to Hungary it generally prefers American military systems (like the Patriot anti-missile and anti-aircraft defence system, and the F-35 fifth-generation combat aircraft – with the signing of a contract for the purchase of 32 F-35 planes just a few days before Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Poland), French equipment is thought to be favoured in the ongoing call for tenders for submarines for the Polish navy, and Poland has expressed interest in participating in the Franco-German project for a common future main battle tank.
While Polish and Hungarian leaders have a rather Gaullist vision of European cooperation and integration, based on the idea of a Europe of equal nations, which is not really compatible with Macron’s vision of a multi-speed European Union with a core increasingly having the attributes of a true federation, both sides thus seem to have come to acknowledge and accept their diverging views on the future of Europe, while choosing to focus more on areas where they agree. On the part of France, this is a real change from previous efforts to carry out ambitious reforms of the EU based mainly on French–German cooperation. Why such a change? As mentioned earlier, one factor is the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union, which makes Poland one of France’s very few potential meaningful EU partners in a European defence system, as France’s only remaining big EU military partner, Germany, is not willing to participate in combat missions overseas. Brexit is also seen by the French as a chance to pursue deeper political integration, and Emmanuel Macron, after having failed to sow division among the Visegrád Four, seems to realise now that such integration cannot be achieved without coming to terms with the current leaders of Hungary and Poland.
Another factor behind Macron’s change of tone towards Hungary and Poland, apart from real common interests in the aforementioned fields, is the reluctance of a much weakened Angela Merkel to support Macron’s euro-federalist proposals, such as a common finance minister and common budget for the Eurozone, or other reforms mentioned in the Meseberg declaration signed by Macron and Merkel in June 2018. In some areas, such as the enlargement of the EU in the Balkans (opposed by France) or France’s critical attitude towards NATO, Berlin has even been on the same side as the Visegrád Four against France, and, unlike President Macron, Chancellor Angela Merkel has always been very careful not to be overtly critical of her Central European partners even when the German media were becoming almost hysterical about supposed breaches of the rule of law in Hungary and Poland. As of now, the prospect of French–German integrated leadership in a two-speed European Union, raised by the signing of the Franco-German treaty of cooperation and integration in January last year, has yet to become reality.
However, the improvement in bilateral relations between France and Poland and France and Hungary has not been followed by a change of attitude by Emmanuel Macron and his LREM party in Brussels and Strasbourg, where the French have maintained their confrontational attitudes towards the two Central European countries, not least because they are encouraged to do so by the most radical opposition politicians from the two countries. It is the Renew Europe group in the European Parliament, where LREM is the party with the most MEPs, which proposed the new “debate” on the rule of law in Poland that took place in an almost empty hemicycle on February 12, and the same LREM MEPs were among the most vocal critics of PiS and Fidesz in earlier such so-called “debates” concerning Poland and Hungary, like those held on December 18 and January 15, to mention only the latest. When in Poland in early February, the French president said that France should not lecture other countries and that the issue of the rule of law in the context of Polish reforms of the judiciary was not a matter of relevance to bilateral relations between member states of the EU. At the same time, Macron said that Paris fully supports the action of the European Commission with respect to Poland. And in a speech given at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow on the subject of “Poland and France in Europe”, Emmanuel Macron referred extensively to the principles and fundamental values of Europe, which he considers to be defended by the European Commission. “Do not believe those who tell you: ‘Europe will give me money for climate transition with one hand, but will allow me to make my own political choices with the other’”, the French president warned once again, returning to his traditional rhetoric regarding the link there should be between European funds and the respect of “European values”.
One reason why the French president should act in this way is that the interference in the Polish judicial reforms by EU institutions is based on their claim that they ought to be entitled to directly interpret and enforce in detail, at national level – bypassing national institutions when these are deemed in Brussels to be in breach of the rule of law – the general principles set out in Article 2 of the Treaty on the European Union, which reads: “The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail.” Such an understanding of the Treaty of Lisbon would extend the ability of EU institutions to act in all fields, not just those laid down in the European treaties, and it would de facto lead to the federalisation of the European Union through the back door, without any need to have a new treaty signed and ratified through the usual democratic procedure, be that through national referendums or by democratically elected national parliaments. Another matter is whether such a Union would hold long without having at its disposal the instruments of real federations: its own police force, its own federal courts in member states and its own army. Macron’s dream of a federal Europe would probably be short-lived, and their attachment to the European Union – together with their attachment to the national sovereignty and democracy they fought so hard for – is an essential reason why V4 leaders oppose his ideas so strongly. Unfortunately for them, the European commissioners dealing with the rule of law and “European values” (whatever that means) are much more in line with the president of France than with the leaders of Poland and Hungary. While endeavouring to improve bilateral relations, Macron’s France should therefore be expected to discreetly continue its offensive against the two countries in Brussels.
Olivier Bault