The black hole at the heart of Europe

Last night, France's government collapsed. Germany has called a snap election after three years of rudderless leadership and absence on the European stage. This is a dangerous moment for the EU.

Michel Barnier, the former European Commissioner and EU Brexit negotiator, became the shortest-serving prime minister in modern French history last night after 331 of the parliament’s 577 lawmakers voted to give him the boot. Following this summer’s snap election, the parliament has been divided into three roughly equal blocs: the far right, the (right-leaning) centrists, and the left & far left. The latter coalition, which includes traditional social democrats as well as hardline Communists, won the most votes in the election but not enough to form a governing majority. Macron, who does not want his liberal party to be allied with the anti-EU far-left France Unbowed party of Jean-Luc Melenchon, opted to form a center-right government dependent on Marine Le Pen’s far right rather than forming a left--leaning government. But that dependency backfired spectacularly this week when Le Pen joined with the far left to oust the center-right Prime Minister Barnier.

As a reminder, unlike most countries in Europe France has a presidential system which is similar to the United States but different in key ways. The French prime minister is something akin to the US Speaker of the House. The prime minister is appointed by the president, but they must be able to survive a majority confidence vote in the parliament. So the big question now is, who can Macron appoint that could get this majority in such an evenly-split parliament? The president will address the nation tonight. He cannot call new legislative elections, because the French constitution says there must be one year between them. The only election he could call is to elect his replacement, by resigning. Le Pen is calling for him to do so, but it is very unlikely that he will because it will only further fan the flames of chaos engulfing France.

To put it mildly, Brussels is alarmed about these latest developments. It was the EU itself that sparked this crisis, in a way, when it put France under an EU excessive deficit procedure earlier this year. These fiscal discipline rules were introduced after the Greece-triggered Eurozone crisis of the last decade. But the Commission had held off applying it to France for many years, ‘parce que c’est la France’ as the saying goes here. In Brussels, France is often considered too important to have the same rules that are applied to everyone else applied to Paris. Now, we see why. Barnier had to make adjustments to the French budget in order to reign in France’s whopping public debt of 6.1% of GDP and overall economic malaise. But the moves he made to do that - changes to social security and the pension age - were fiercely opposed by the far right and far left, who then came together to defeat his budget. When he tried to use a constitutional clause to bypass the parliament in order to pass his budget, they then ousted him.

As a response to the political chaos and economic outlook, the markets have downgraded France’s bonds to the same level as Greece’s. That, of course, is sparking concerns that a new Eurozone crisis will imminently be triggered by this. This instability is not just France’s problem, it is a problem for all of the EU. Meanwhile, next door, the other partner in the EU’s Franco-German engine is gearing up for a snap election called after three years of a sputtering government that has presided over severe economic decline and an absence of leadership at European level. This has created a leadership vacuum in the two core EU countries that normally form the core of the union. Who will step into the void? The obvious answer is Italy’s far-right prime minister Giorgia Meloni, who over the past year has emerged as the most politically powerful leader in Europe. But there are other contenders. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who formerly chaired the European Council, has emerged as the standard-bearer of the center right. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has emerged as the standard-bearer of the center left. But is it really possible for medium-sized or smaller EU countries to fill the vacuum left by France and Germany’s political collapse? Or alternatively, is it possible for Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to grow a spine in her second term and become a Delors-style leader, a true EU president? I’ve expressed my doubts about this in the past given her acquiescent attitude toward national capitals during her first term, but it still remains a possibility that she could surprise us.

These leaderless times for Europe come at a dangerous moment globally, with Donald Trump set to launch a trade war against the EU, force Ukraine to surrender to Russia and possibly pull the US out of NATO leaving Europe close to defenceless. How can a Europe in such a weak spot, with a Franco-German political collapse and the British forcing themselves into irrelevance, possibly hope to stand up to Trump (or Putin, or Xi) and defend the interests of Europeans?

The other thing that deserves some thought is why voters in the West are doing this. The French government has collapsed because about half of French voters chose the far right or far left in July. Trump has come into office because half of American voters chose the far right last month. While it is clear that state actors like Russia are stoking the flames using social media to manipulate people in the West into voting for these chaos candidates (as has been shown the ongoing Romania elections) we have to acknowledge that these citizens also have free agency. It is clear that citizens are choosing the chaos. We cannot keep deluding ourselves into thinking that they are being tricked by Putin. People are clearly in a burn-it-all-down mood similar to the 1930s. They want the chaos, and maybe they even want war. Whether they realize the full implication of burning it all down remains to be seen. But it now feels that any hope of maintaining a stable world order would just be naive. Each time we have these new superlatives, like the first time a French government has been brought down by parliament in modern French history, it should remind us that the old days are done. The Pax Americana is over, and we are heading for a new era of political chaos and strongman leadership. What happens next is anyone’s guess. But we should all have our eyes open that this is the new normal.