Macron keeps a door open for Brits

Emmanuel Macron is basking in the spotlight of Brexit. His performance at the summit of European leaders, in which he took a tough line publicly against the UK’s desperate request for a delay to the March 29th deadline, has been compared to Charles de Gaulle’s repeated refusal to let Britain join the European Community in the 1960s.
An unconditional delay? Non. A postponement that might impact EU elections in May? Non. More help to get Theresa May’s deal past her divided parliament? Non, non, non. Macron and his ministers, in tune with pro-European public opinion at home, appeared to stand firm.
Yet Paris is more flexible than all of this suggests. Behind the scenes, in the thick of the fraught summit, Macron was open about finding ways to play a tactical game to help Prime Minister Theresa May. His opposition to an unconditional delay was dropped. The double-pronged “Brextension” that he backed did not rule out something even longer eventually, possibly into the summer or through to 2020. Macron is keeping pathways clear for the UK to return to the European fold. He may end up more like De Gaulle’s successor, Georges Pompidou – also a former Rothschild banker – who famously let the Brits in.
France has competing priorities on Brexit. Civil servants and bankers close to the finance ministry were focused at first on grabbing business from the City of London. But the triumphalism has faded. Now the worry is the potential impact of a no-deal Brexit on France’s 3.5 billion euro trade surplus with Britain. A UK departure without agreement could cost France 3 billion euros of exports in 2019, according to credit specialist Euler Hermes, at a time when economic indicators already point to sputtering French demand. That wouldn’t help defuse the Gilets Jaunes street protests.
So Macron’s tweets promising his citizens that the country is ready for a no-deal Brexit aren’t convincing. Anyone taking the Eurostar from Paris in recent weeks will have found out how many hours customs checks can add to a train journey, thanks to striking officials.
Politically, too, Brexit is complicated for Macron. It’s true that his strategy for the European elections benefits from Britain’s obvious dysfunction and salutary lesson it offers to euroskeptics. Macron’s party is polling just ahead of Le Pen’s in France, by 23% to 22%. Preventing the UK from taking part in those elections would be preferable, given Macron’s ambitions of forging a federalist bloc to rival the center-right and populist parties.
But Paris is also unwilling to alienate a neighbour that holds a seat on the UN Security Council and has the biggest military budget in the EU.
—Bloomberg

Lionel Laurent is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Brussels. He previously worked at Reuters and Forbes