The European Union did not grow from the grassroots. Its “informal mechanisms of power” (as Pierre Bourdieu might have put it) and the hierarchy that resulted from them have always been a decisive factor for integration. Talk of the “Franco-German engine” driving the Union merely paraphrases the reality that these two states’ partnership was for a long time a “hegemonic center of power” in the EU.

On the one hand, the Franco-German couple was always at the top of the hierarchy of the European integration project. While France was the leading partner up until German reunification in 1990, since the end of the Cold War, this power balance has shifted. And during the post-2008 financial crisis and the connected Eurozone crisis, the relationship had been completely reversed. French president Emmanuel Macron is now trying to bring his country at least back up to par — as he states openly, “I have chosen a path that will restore France’s place among the nations of Europe.”

Such ambitions inform Macron’s call for a Eurozone budget with a euro finance minister, his harsh criticism of the Germans’ mad bid for a “world championship” in current account surpluses, and France’s recent entry into the alliance of Southern states in favor of coronabonds. He thus seeks to compensate for France’s economic problems with the help of “Europe” — that is, a mainly rhetorical drive to “Make France great again!” on the international stage.