A more French EU around the corner?

By Georgi Gotev

Editorialists can sometimes feel bad if they read columns they wrote a couple of years ago or even a couple of months ago. I start today’s Brief with this disclaimer.

We all make mistakes. We collectively thought Angela Merkel was the best leader the EU could have, and we regretted her departure.

Now, after she acted as if she was Vladimir Putin’s asset, including by spearheading Germany’s addiction to Russian gas, the best that could be said about her is that she is doing everyone a favour by taking her retirement seriously.

Many people in Brussels think Ursula von der Leyen will win another mandate as Commission chief. Many believe, and I agree, that she has shown wondrous leadership in the context of Russia’s brutal aggression against Ukraine.

But is this enough?

To get the top job, one needs the support of a qualified majority of EU heads of state and government and a simple majority vote in the European parliament.

Maths aside, in practice, without the support of France, any candidate will fail.

In 2019, von der Leyen was a surprise proposal by Emmanuel Macron. Viktor Orbán voted against it, but that wasn’t an obstacle. In the European Parliament, the vote was tight, and she passed, thanks to the votes of the outgoing pro-EU British MEPs.

A tight race for third place in the European Parliament elections continues with the liberal Renew Europe group recovering the lead over far-right ID and nationalist-conservative ECR group, according to Europe Elect’s latest projection for Euractiv.

France should continue refusing to include renewable targets in its energy-climate plan, which will be submitted to the European Commission in June, the country’s former energy minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher said this week.

Despite deteriorating political relations between Armenia and Russia, bilateral trade has flourished, leaving Western partners wondering about Yerevan’s approach to sanctions.

A senior European Union official denied that the bloc’s recently agreed-upon plan to diversify its supply of strategically critical raw materials targets China, a move that could be seen as trying to ease increasingly fraught relations between Beijing and Brussels.

Belarus faced the first EU sanctions almost 30 years ago, however, it seems this was not enough for all the involved parties to build an effective information policy regarding the sanctions.

To stay on top of EU politics ahead of the European elections, check out this week’s EU Elections Decoded.

• Commissioner Iliana Ivanova in China Friday-Sunday; Japan Monday-Wednesday.

Views are the author’s

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic/Alice Taylor]