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Emmanuel Macron Names Édouard Philippe as Prime Minister of France Macron and Merkel Meet, Pledging to Save European Unity
(about 5 hours later)
PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron of France named Édouard Philippe, a moderate center-right lawmaker, as prime minister on Monday, a crucial and high-profile decision as he tries to balance his promise to bring change with the demands of running the country. BERLIN — The new French president and the veteran German chancellor used their first engagement on Monday to declare their determination to salvage European unity now that France has beaten back the immediate risk from radical populism, which threatened to undo the European Union itself.
Mr. Macron, who ran as an independent centrist after leaving the Socialist government of his predecessor, is expected to name the rest of his cabinet by the middle of the week. The selection of Mr. Philippe, 46, from the center-right party the Republicans, was announced by Alexis Kohler, the president’s secretary general, in the courtyard of the Élysée Palace. As has become tradition for a new leader in either France or Germany, the first trip abroad is to the other’s country, and Chancellor Angela Merkel continued in the regal spirit of Emmanuel Macron’s inauguration as French president on Sunday, greeting her visitor with full military honors.
Mr. Philippe, who is also the mayor of the northern port city of Le Havre, is a close political ally of Alain Juppé, a former prime minister who ran, unsuccessfully, in the center-right presidential primary last year, and who is also a central figure of the Republicans’ centrist wing. Hundreds of onlookers, some waving European flags, cheered at the brief ceremony.
Mr. Philippe was not a nationally known figure in France until last week, when the news media started reporting that he was one of the main candidates being considered for prime minister. The pomp reflected a rare moment of hope for a European Union that has in recent years faced a relentless succession of troubles — the euro and debt crisis, a migration and border crisis, terrorist attacks, the British vote to bail on the bloc — that has left it staring at the prospect of disintegration.
Before his nomination on Monday, French television channels frantically covered his movements live, with cameramen on motorbikes following his taxi through Paris. The election of Mr. Macron now offers the bloc, but Ms. Merkel in particular, a chance to hit reset and for its core partners to press ahead with overhauls to save the decades-old project of economic and political comity that has preserved peace and prosperity on the Continent.
Mr. Macron, 39, who had never held elective office before winning the presidential race on May 7, became the youngest head of state in modern French history when he was inaugurated on Sunday. He was scheduled to travel to Berlin later on Monday for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel. No doubt mindful of those stakes, the two very different leaders — he a 39-year-old novice politician and former investment banker, she a 62-year-old scientist from Communist East Germany, in office since 2005 — immediately sat down to a first round of talks.
In many ways, Mr. Philippe mirrors Mr. Macron: Both are younger than most French politicians, both went to top French universities and both have worked in the private sector. At a 25-minute news conference, they both took pains to emphasize that they would cooperate, and that they understood what Mr. Macron called “the message of worry and anger” expressed in the extremist vote in France’s presidential election.
Mr. Macron was an investment banker for Rothschild, and Mr. Philippe worked as a lawyer for the American firm Debevoise & Plimpton, and as head of public affairs for Areva, the French nuclear power giant. Neither leader addressed the other by first name — it apparently being a little too early in their relationship to adopt that European Union custom. But each was scrupulously attentive to the other at what Ms. Merkel termed “a very critical moment for the European Union.”
“I believe they know and like each other, because of their intellectual honesty and their rigor,” said Benjamin Griveaux, a spokesman for Mr. Macron and a candidate in the legislative elections in June, on Europe 1 radio. The chancellor did not rule out European Union treaty changes if that proved necessary to push medium-term overhauls. But first “we will work on what we want to reform,” she noted with a smile.
The nomination of a centrist Republican as prime minister could play a significant role as Mr. Macron tries to persuade more moderates to join his En Marche! (Onward!) movement before those elections — or at least to work with the organization in Parliament. All 577 seats in the National Assembly, France’s lower house of Parliament, are up for grabs. Mr. Macron is the fourth French president Ms. Merkel has dealt with since taking office in 2005, and easily the youngest. The Frenchman was met at the airport by his friend Sigmar Gabriel, Ms. Merkel’s vice chancellor and foreign minister, an unusual departure from protocol that highlighted the German’s desire to push the chancellor into close cooperation with Mr. Macron.
Mr. Macron’s election this month rattled France’s traditional political parties, and he wants to pull in moderates from both the Republicans and the Socialists, France’s traditional left-wing formation, to marginalize both of those parties. The French president quickly signaled on Monday how seriously he takes the relationship with Germany, appointing Édouard Philippe, a 46-year-old conservative who is said to speak fluent German, as his prime minister. The announcement came shortly before the president left for Berlin, where the French ambassador, Philippe Étienne, will now become Mr. Macron’s senior policy adviser.
“I am convinced that the Republicans will split because that is the way political life is being reshaped,” Mr. Macron said in an interview with Le Parisien before the second round of the presidential election, in which he defeated the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. Analysts and politicians in both countries emphasized the need to make palpable progress on problems like youth unemployment, which European leaders have vowed to address countless times, to little tangible effect. If improvements are not made, the fear is that Marine Le Pen in France, and other populists across Europe, will rise and destroy Europe’s hard-won unity.
French presidents are free to choose their prime ministers, but only if they hold a majority in the National Assembly. If that is not the case, the party that dominates the assembly has the leverage to insist that one of its members become prime minister. Although Mr. Macron won handily over Ms. Le Pen in a presidential runoff in France this month, about 11 million people voted for her, and the victor swiftly underlined that France must recover during his five-year term, or open the door to extremism.
That means that Mr. Macron could be forced to replace his prime minister, depending on the outcome of the June elections. Ms. Merkel and her strong-willed finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, had indicated before Monday’s important talks that they were ready to be flexible in attempts to address France’s economic woes, and the chancellor emphasized that Germans must not act superior.
“We should not sit like people who know it all better, but as friends, in partnership, and with great respect for each other,” Ms. Merkel said Monday before the meeting.
The inequality between prospering Germany and a more struggling France has marred Europe’s key partnership in recent years. That puts the onus on Mr. Macron and Ms. Merkel to find the kind of close cooperation the two say they seek.
If they succeed, noted Thorsten Benner of the Global Public Policy Institute, a Berlin-based think tank, it is not just Mr. Macron and France that would benefit.
“A more balanced relationship between Germany and France would help to put an end to Berlin’s reputation as a selfish European hegemon, reducing the anti-German sentiment that is rising across the Continent,” Mr. Benner and Thomas Gomart of the Paris-based French Institute of International Relations wrote recently in Foreign Affairs.
For now, Mr. Benner said in an interview, it is enough that both Ms. Merkel and Mr. Schäuble have signaled they are ready to be flexible and invest in programs to spur development. Mr. Schäuble conceded in an interview with the weekly Der Spiegel that Germany’s trade surplus — which Mr. Benner said stands at 35 billion euros, or about $38 billion, with France alone — is too high. “It was very important that Schäuble sent that signal,” he said.
For her part, Ms. Merkel said last week that she had been ready in 2013 to contemplate a eurozone budget “with which to help countries who want to reform.”
“Here we could add means to the funds we already have in order to temporarily help countries in this area,” Ms. Merkel said at a business dinner in Düsseldorf. “I would gladly develop concepts with Emmanuel Macron which can quickly bring hope to people who have no work.”
First, however, Mr. Macron needs as much support as he can find in France’s legislative elections in June. Then, Ms. Merkel needs to win the fourth term she seeks in Germany’s national elections in September.
Mr. Gabriel, the Social Democrat vice chancellor, has pushed hard for Berlin to relax its stance on government spending and the shared euro currency.
If a French leader has the courage to speak of a common budget for the eurozone, then Germany should also have the courage “to think again about some firm positions in the currency and be open to a Franco-German compromise in the currency union,” Mr. Gabriel wrote in a paper published in Der Spiegel and said by his Foreign Ministry to be genuine.
The new scramble in Berlin to be seen as ready for change brought warnings not to try too much and then disappoint European voters once more.
“Pragmatic modesty and patience are advisable,” wrote Christoph von Marschall, the senior editor at the Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel.
“Small steps are necessary and possible,” but anything ambitious that eats away at solidarity is more difficult, he said. “The challenge now is to preserve the good will and the élan until they are really needed, in winter. Macron and Merkel must not begin with the prickly subjects.”
Europe “has just survived a near-death experience,” wrote a Merkel biographer, Stefan Kornelius of the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. “There will not be many more chances. France and Germany should take their time. They do not just need a plan. It must also work.”