From European Confederation to European Political Community: how Mitterrand’s failure could enable Macron to succeed
From European Confederation to European Political Community: how Mitterrand’s failure could enable Macron to succeed

Summary/Abstract: In 2022 Emmanuel Macron put forward the European Political Community as an initiative designed to advance European integration at a moment when he considered that enlargement of the European Union was not feasible in the short-term. His proposal generated favourable attitudes but also criticism and drew the attention of experts who produced a literature where both the merits and weaknesses of the European Political Community have been appraised. In conducting the assessment of its deficiencies, experts often compared them with causes that determined the failure of another project aiming at fostering European integration, the European Confederation, that François Mitterrand launched at the end of 1989. Taking this comparison as its starting point, the article considers if failure factors for the European Confederation that experts do not connect to the European Political Community because they think them as unimportant for the success of the EPC or simply because they do not identify them as having caused the defeat of the EC, could generate a similar effect on Macron’s initiative. The article concludes that all key elements that contributed to the defeat of the European Confederation maintain their relevancy for the success of the European Political Community and suggests solutions to prevent Macron’s initiative from failing for the same reasons.

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