The french are very pro EU, maybe more so than the rest of the continent. The french pay attention to strategic things and that's why they project their will into the EU hoping the bigger demography will help keep fighting against the super powers.
Yet they totally fail to realize that the rest of the continent doesn't always think like them. That some countries will never accept a majority vote, that some others just take the EU for it currently is: an economic free exchange zone with democratic requirement.
Still today, for a french commoner, the solution the contradictions of EU, in social, economic or strategic matters is always more europe and be damn if you don't.
Le Pen is not "quite popular". Except in the rich neighborhoods where she's from, it's hard to find anyone supporting her views. However, even in the poor neighborhoods where i'm from, it's more and more common to find disillusioned youths who'll happily announce they will vote Le Pen just to put an end to the current political system. I personally believe that view to be naive and concerns people who watch television, but still, that's not exactly what i'd call being "popular". Except for actual fascists from the big cities, i've yet to find a single person telling me they appreciate Le Pen's racist ideas or even just her person.
To be fair, when i'd say it's naive to vote for Le Pen, i think it's naive to vote for any candidate except maybe for Melenchon who's still on the center of the political spectrum. Otherwise, whether it's Hollande (who was elected with "finance is our enemy" then named Macron the banker as minister) or Macron (who was only elected due to looking less worse than Le Pen but ends up having exactly the same racist/capitalist policies) there's really noone on the political spectrum to propose "progressive" policies and actual implement them. I guess that's something we french people have in common with the US which has a very similar political system and is just as a corrupt and genocidal.
If that was the design, it produced the opposite effect! Lol.
But seriously, there is no grand design. The EU is the result of 60 years of compromises between larger and larger groups of countries which understand that, alone, they count for nothing in the age of continent-sized superpowers.
Did you read those pieces? They say the factors pushing up the French economy are one-offs that will soon fan out, and Germany has massive fiscal resources still to be deployed.
I don't have a dog in this fight, TBH I don't even think it's a fight - the two countries fundamentally need each other.
I don’t have anything to gain either from my position.
The issue with the articles (I can find more from earlier years) is that they’ve been saying the same thing using a variety short term rationale for decades.
imo The EU in general and even internally within Germany itself has fears of a resurgent Germany given its past, which makes sense
When German reunification was being discussed, right after the Wall fell, other European governments (France, Italy, UK) agreed not to oppose it in exchange for German commitment to the European Economic Community (as it was then called) and to adopt the common currency that was then being designed (the ECU was still a virtual currency). This was seen as "straight jacketing" Germany, forcing it to share its economic fortunes with the whole continent, impeding a resurgence of all-out competition with France, and hence ensuring peace. This has been reported by then-leaders who were literally in the room with Helmut Kohl as things were agreed: they called it "reunification (in exchange) for peace".
This approach has fundamentally worked: Germany doesn't, and cannot, see itself in any future that does not involve the EU, and them adopting the Euro ensured its short-term success. It did, however, work a bit too well for the German economy, which now benefits from a large market where other players cannot fix trade imbalances with currency devaluation. That is a structural advantage that they will enjoy for a very long time (possibly forever), enshrining their role as the biggest economy in the bloc. I don't see this changing anytime soon, as long as the Euro is around.
Thanks for enlightening me. Since it wasn’t clear, my question in my first comment was actually a question and not a rhetorical one i.e. I didn’t really know anything
Yet they totally fail to realize that the rest of the continent doesn't always think like them. That some countries will never accept a majority vote, that some others just take the EU for it currently is: an economic free exchange zone with democratic requirement. Still today, for a french commoner, the solution the contradictions of EU, in social, economic or strategic matters is always more europe and be damn if you don't.