His joint initiative with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer to assemble a “coalition of the willing” remains the only game in town when it comes to supporting any eventual peace deal in Ukraine. “It’s not good for the EU if one of the biggest member states is in turmoil, especially in the current security situation,” the same eurozone official said.
A muscular “Franco-German engine” — with powerful leaders working together in Paris and Berlin — is conventionally seen as essential to making the EU strong and efficient. Macron’s travails make that far harder to achieve, even with a new leader in Germany in Friedrich Merz, who is seen in Brussels as far more dynamic than his predecessor.
A French official from the cabinet of an outgoing minister acknowledged the problem. “This leaves France absent at a time when Russia is making incursions into European territories, [when] China has incredible industrial overcapacity, and [when] Trump’s United States continues to do silly things,” the person said. “I think France’s leadership will be missing. It’s impossible for France to give what France has to give under these conditions.”
Then there’s the question of what, or who, comes next. If Macron does trigger new elections, the French far right stands to gain, although the RN’s poll share has remained broadly stable at around 30 percent to 32 percent since the 2024 legislative elections.
Europe’s far right has been emboldened by Macron’s struggles, even before Monday’s government collapse. Le Pen, the godmother of the National Rally, celebrated the victory of rightist-populist Andrej Babiš in last weekend’s election in the Czech Republic — and used Monday’s crisis to reiterate her calls for a new election.
Geert Wilders, the veteran far-right Dutch firebrand who won the most seats in the last election in the Netherlands, had a warning for “all the old leaders,” including Macron, earlier this year: “Your time is over.”
Sarah Paillou contributed reporting.