In a 22-language tweet on Monday night, French President Emmanuel Macron declared, “We are at a pivotal moment for our continent.” In a spirited defense of the European Union (EU), Macron added, “We cannot let nationalists without solutions exploit the people’s anger.”
The occasion for the open letter to the “Citizens of Europe” was the upcoming elections for the European Parliament, held during this time when the secession of the United Kingdom from the EU is imminent. Macron was clearly angry about that looming secession, known as “Brexit,” which threatens the plans of globalists such as himself who despise national sovereignty. He condemned Brexit as an “irresponsible lie peddled by anger mongers backed by fake news.”
Brexit is scheduled for March 29. The vote by the British public in 2016 to leave the EU is regarded as one of the most serious blows yet to the desires of the globalist elites to reduce national sovereignty and move toward a more integrated world.
“Never, since the Second World War, has Europe been as essential. Yet never has Europe been in so much danger,” Macron warned. Fear of a third continental war has been utilized extensively by those who laud the supposed benefits of the EU. For these folks, every enemy to globalism is a potential Hitler, and it is always 1938.
Macron argues in his letter that had the British public known just how important continued membership in the EU was to the U.K., they would not have voted to leave. “The trap is not being part of the European Union,” Macron tweeted. “The trap is in the lie and the irresponsibility that can destroy it. Who told the British people the truth about their post-Brexit future? Who spoke to them about losing access to the European market?”
Of course, several British politicians told the British public that Brexit would cost them “access to the European market,” most notably the prime minister at the time, David Cameron. Britons heard all of these arguments Macron is now making, but in the end, a majority of the voters simply did not believe the supposed benefits of EU membership were worth the loss of their national sovereignty.
While EU proponents always tout the economics of EU membership, Macron himself said, “Europe is not just a market. It is a project.”
And just what is that project that is greater than mere economics? To Macron, “Nationalist retrenchment offers nothing.” Those who refuse to be part of the EU should face the consequences: “What power in the world would accept continued trade with those who respect none of their rules? We cannot suffer in silence. We need to reform our competition policy and reshape our trade policy with penalties or a ban in Europe on businesses that compromise our strategic interests and fundamental values such as environmental standards, data protection and fair payment of taxes.”
What are those “environmental standards?” Macron argued, “The European Union needs to set its target — zero carbon by 2050 and pesticides halved by 2025 — and adapt its policies accordingly with such measures as a European Climate bank to finance the ecological transition.” In short, as Macron insists, “All our institutions need to have the climate as their mandate.”
Such environmental mandates, by themselves, would require a draconian and heavily controlled economy. But Macron also called for a “European social shield for all workers, east to west and north to south, guaranteeing the same pay in the same workplace, and a minimum European wage.” How would such a government control on wages be set? Macron suggested the policy should be “discussed collectively each year” — in other words, the EU would set wages across the economy of Europe.
For Macron, the goals of the EU should extend beyond Europe. He calls for a “world-oriented Europe,” that needs to look to creating “covenant” with Africa.
This implies that the integration of European society is the not the end-goal. Macron and other such global-minded elitists look to closer integration with other continents, as well.
The difficulty encountered by the British in effecting a clean break with the EU, and the angry reaction of the 41-year-old French president to Brexit, should provide a warning to Americans. The recently negotiated trade deal with Mexico and Canada by the Trump Administration (USMCA) could be expected to evolve into a superstate (North American Union?) patterned along the lines of the EU, with unelected bureaucrats dictating economic and social policies throughout the North American continent.
The modern EU began as a simple trade deal among six European nations, but over the years it has evolved to its present Big Government behemoth. When then-U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher warned years ago that the growing European superstate threatened Britain’s national sovereignty, the globalists in her own country swiftly removed her. Globalists such as Emmanuel Macron do not like anyone who stands in the way of their plans of global integration.
Photo: AP Images
