Macron’s summit seeks fast-track ‘sovereign Europe’

Good morning and welcome to Europe Categorical.

EU leaders are heading to Versailles tomorrow for an casual summit hosted by Emmanuel Macron, because the warfare in Ukraine is offering the French president a main alternative to push ahead his EU sovereignty agenda.

We’ll have a look at what’s anticipated to be mentioned and why the concept of recent joint borrowing devoted to dealing with the influence of the warfare is just not flying in a number of capitals, nor within the European Fee. (Right here’s the FT’s tackle the EU’s efforts to take care of its thus-far united entrance on Russia.)

Elsewhere within the EU, we’ll discover why Matteo Salvini’s newest try and distance himself from his former idol, Russian president Vladimir Putin, has backfired spectacularly on the Polish-Ukrainian border.

And in lighter information, we’ll convey you a dispatch from Dublin on how Irish clergymen have chosen to precise their disdain and horror on the Kremlin’s warfare in Ukraine.

Macron summitry

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has come as a salutary shock to the EU, galvanising its 27 members into taking swift motion to scale back their dependence on imported power and their reliance on the US-led Nato defence umbrella, write Victor Mallet and Sarah White in Paris.

Emmanuel Macron’s longstanding warnings on the necessity for the EU to strengthen its financial and strategic autonomy have thus been dramatically vindicated up to now two weeks — and it could be out of character for the French president to not press his benefit on the summit he’s internet hosting in Versailles this week.

The official intention of the assembly is to develop a bland-sounding “new European mannequin for development and funding”. However France, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency till the top of June, is anticipated to push for a brand new spherical of joint disaster measures that won’t essentially discover favour with extra fiscally cautious member states in northern Europe.

Probably the most controversial of those plans can be new joint borrowing — modelled on the €800bn post-pandemic restoration fund — that may finance measures to scale back dependence on Russian gasoline and even joint defence initiatives. The intention can be the creation of an EU model of France’s embryonic nationwide “resilience plan” to cope with the influence of gas worth spikes and attainable shortages on households and companies.

“That is likely one of the matters of debate,” mentioned a distinctly cagey French authorities official yesterday. One other claimed on the weekend that this was not a particularly French initiative and that “lots of people are fascinated with it”, including that one resolution could be to adapt the present fund often called NextGenerationEU.

Macron triumphed again in 2020 in persuading then German chancellor Angela Merkel to again the pandemic plan and have it financed by frequent EU debt, however he’s cautious about attempting to push issues too far along with her successor, Olaf Scholz, who was finance minister on the time and whose officers are chilly on this subject.

Frans Timmermans, vice-president of the European Fee, hinted on the awkwardness over the concept of a brand new fund when he instructed a information convention in Strasbourg yesterday: “We’ve got no such plans within the fee . . . I don’t know if there could be in some member states.” 

Even with out asserting a recent spherical of frequent debt-raising or a brand new fund altogether, the summit is more likely to commit the EU to measures that may have appeared revolutionary just a few weeks in the past. A draft summit declaration obtained by the Monetary Instances mentioned the leaders would agree “to part out our dependency on Russian gasoline, oil and coal imports”. 

And Macron, who’s standing for re-election subsequent month, will proceed to push for the extra strong and extra federal Europe he has been recommending since he took workplace 5 years in the past. In a tv interview on Monday, he argued that the warfare in Ukraine confirmed the necessity for extra EU autonomy — political, army and by way of power provide. “The conclusion of all that is extra Europe,” he mentioned.

Chart du jour: Sanctions influence

Western sanctions towards Russia are a double-edged weapon, since they impose vital prices on strange folks and have a patchy file of bringing about regime change. Putin’s crackdown on freedom of expression and ramped-up propaganda could lead to a majority of Russians blaming the west for the financial hardship. Nonetheless, the west should keep it up and help Ukraine, writes Martin Wolf. (Extra right here)

Salvini’s troubles

Italy’s rightwing chief, Matteo Salvini, by no means made any secret of his unabashed admiration for Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

The far-right populist, who was Italy’s deputy prime minister for 15 months till September 2019, has worn a T-shirt with Putin’s picture within the European Parliament — and posed in the identical T-shirt, with a tacky grin and a thumbs-up, on a go to to Crimson Sq. in Moscow.

Salvini additionally expressed his adulation on social media, repeatedly evaluating Putin favourably to western leaders, like former US president Barack Obama, and Italy’s personal President Sergio Mattarella. His celebration, the League, had a proper tie-up with Putin’s United Russia, and he publicly criticised the EU’s sanctions towards Russia after its 2014 annexation of Crimea.

However with the world horrified at Putin’s invasion of Ukraine — and Italy’s subsequent normal election due subsequent yr — Salvini is frantically attempting to recast himself because the humane, heartbroken sympathiser of strange Ukrainians struggling below Russian aggression.

Days after the invasion started, Salvini laid flowers on the doorstep of the Ukrainian embassy in Rome, then made the signal of the cross. “A prayer for peace,” he tweeted. His Twitter timeline is now crammed with grim photos from Ukraine — and his self-claimed angst at such scenes.

Nonetheless, the Italian politician’s effort at a picture makeover went off the rails this week in Poland’s small city of Przemysl, the place Salvini had gone ostensibly to indicate his concern, and supply solace, for the move of Ukrainian refugees.

As an alternative, the city’s mayor, Wojciech Bakun, offered Salvini with a Putin T-shirt similar to the one he had so proudly worn in Crimson Sq. and invited him to place it on for a go to to a humanitarian centre on the border, and “see what your good friend has carried out.” 

The picture of the mayor with the T-shirt unfurled, whereas Salvini hangs his head in embarrassment, has now gone viral on Italian social media.

Unbelievable scenes.

LEGA chief and Putin supporter Matteo Salvini went to Polish border the place refugees maintain flowing in.

Przemysl mayor Bakun refused to welcome Salvini exhibiting his t-shirt with Putin: “Come to the border and criticise your good friend Putin!”pic.twitter.com/s4AX1YewSt

— Antonello Guerrera (@antoguerrera) March 8, 2022

“I needed him to see along with his personal eyes what his good friend had led to, and in addition HIM as Putin’s supporter,” Bakun wrote on Fb after the assembly.

Salvini is just not the one rightwing western populist now coming undone resulting from shut ties to Putin’s motion.

French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has ordered the destruction of 1.2mn election flyers that featured a photograph of her proudly shaking arms with Putin in Moscow in 2017, with the caption “a lady of conviction”.

However Salvini’s humiliating run-in with the Polish mayor could also be a good more durable picture to brush apart — and much more damaging — than all his earlier messages of commendation for the Russian chief.

Irish resistance

From the nation that gave the world the rule-breaking Father Ted, a parish priest and a supplier of ecclesiastical provides have taken the regulation into their very own arms in Eire to protest towards Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, writes Jude Webber in Dublin.

Desmond Wisley was bailed yesterday after he reversed his truck — which is used to ship wine, bread, altar cloths, candles and vestments to church buildings — into the gates of the Russian embassy in Dublin.

A big truck has crashed by means of the gates of the Russian embassy in south Dublin. One man has been arrested. pic.twitter.com/35yLDfGhEd

— RTÉ Information (@rtenews) March 7, 2022

“I’ve carried out it for this woman right here, and her youngsters, who have been killed in Irpin at the moment,” he mentioned, holding up {a photograph} of victims of the battle. To the applause of a handful of protesters, he mentioned he was making a “secure hall for the Russian ambassador to go away Eire”. He added: “I’ve carried out my bit, lads.”

Days earlier, Father Fergal MacDonagh threw crimson paint — symbolising the blood of harmless victims — over the gates of the embassy, saying he was moved to motion after being outraged at Moscow’s bombing of a maternity hospital. “Putin will face justice on this world or the following,” he mentioned.

Eire’s authorities has resisted requires Russian ambassador Yuri Filatov to be expelled from Dublin, saying it was necessary to maintain diplomatic channels open.

The embassy, situated on the aptly named Orwell Highway and with a big workers believed to incorporate a sizeable contingent of intelligence operatives, mentioned in a statement it “condemns this act of prison madness”, which it branded “mindless and barbaric”. Eire’s ambassador to Russia was summoned to the overseas ministry in Moscow to clarify why police stood by with out intervening.

Deputy prime minister Leo Varadkar appealed to Irish folks to protest towards the invasion of Ukraine — however peacefully and with out incurring prison injury, saying such “silly” acts can be misrepresented on Russian state tv as Irish folks being concerned in violent acts towards Russians.

What to observe at the moment

1. Estonia’s prime minister Kaja Kallas speaks within the European Parliament in Strasbourg

2. US vice-president Kamala Harris visits Poland

3. Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte offers a speech in Paris on Europe

Notable, Quotable

We’re transferring ahead this ban understanding that lots of our European allies and companions will not be able to affix us

• US oil ban: The Biden administration yesterday went forward and introduced an oil ban on Russian imports, whereas acknowledging for the primary time that they diverge from Europe on measures geared toward stopping the Russian warfare in Ukraine.

• Shell pulls out: London-listed power group Shell has mentioned it would withdraw totally from Russia and instantly cease new purchases of Russian oil, days after the power main was criticised for cashing in on a cargo of low-cost Russian crude.

• Danone stays: French conglomerate Danone will proceed to function in Russia, regardless of a western company exodus, with its CEO yesterday ruling out the sale of any of the group’s companies.

• UK fraud: The EU’s prime court docket has dominated the UK should reimburse Brussels for permitting fraudsters to flood the bloc with undervalued imports of garments and footwear from China and keep away from paying €2.7bn in duties. The case dates again to when the UK was nonetheless an EU member state.