Editorial of the “World”. The triggering of the war in Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron tried in vain to avoid, add a stone more to the tragic of his mandate. ELU in 2017 on an optimistic note, the French president completes him in the stretched atmosphere of the defense councils. By March 7, deadline to enter campaign, it will have to focus on this conflict that threatens the stability of the world, especially since France has occupied since the beginning of the year the Rotating Presidency of the Union European (EU). His five-year old will have been a succession of trials.
The own crises is to steep the priorities of the time. After the long health event, which revealed the industrial and scientific vulnerability of France, the war triggered by Vladimir Putin to break the Ukraine places our country and its European allies against other weaknesses: which line red tracing against a dictator who wants to rebuild the European order to his hand? What weapons oppose him while no one in the EU is ready to die for Ukraine? What assets mobilize so that mocking democracies for their weakness by authoritarian regimes such as Russia and China win the fight?
In twenty-four hours, the French political climate has changed dramatically. Everywhere gravity has emerged, ranks have tightened. Those who believed to keep up the pavement in the election campaign with transgressions and radicality had to fold down. Introduced in their complacency vis-à-vis Vladimir Putin, Eric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen suddenly dropped the tone. The Republicans attempted to forget that they had one day for the presidential candidate a denominated François Fillon. The former Prime Minister of Nicolas Sarkozy, who sits on the Board of Directors of the Russian Giant of Petrochemical Sibur, sowed consternation by publishing on Twitter a message only half condemning the attitude of the Russian president.
Europe vulnerable
Rarely an international event will have soighered on a campaign. Parliament, who had to complete his work, pursues them. A “message” of the President of the Republic had to be read Friday, February 25 before the National Assembly and the Senate pending the holding of a debate on Tuesday. It is from there that the campaign will actually begin, around an interrogation that had so far seemed to escape the competitors: the protection of the country in an immediate environment that has become increasingly dangerous.
The themes so far put forward by the candidates to try to bait the elector – immigration, the identity decline, the defense of purchasing power – appear suddenly offset. The big subject becomes the reconquest of sovereignty, in all its aspects: industrial, military, strategic.
In the point in the European combat, Emmanuel Macron can boast of having a step ahead of his competitors. It was the first to highlight the vulnerabilities of the European continent, to militate for the concept of strategic autonomy and wanting to train the EU in the construction of a sufficiently attractive economic and democratic model to hold the high dragee with dictators . Blocked for years around budgetary and monetary issues, the European debate is taking a different dimension. Candidates to seize and show the height of views that has so far failed in this campaign.