Financial Times: Emmanuel Macron’s EU accession veto is a historic mistake

You consider that French president Emmanuel Macron has made a “historic mistake” in vetoing the opening of EU accession negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania, but the French opposition to the opening of negotiations is in no way linked to the particular assessment of the candidate countries, but to a much more fundamental political problem that Europe has been totally unable to resolve since 2004: the deepening of its mechanisms of political integration in exchange for enlargement, writes Financial Times.

“The French point of view is therefore perfectly clear: as long as Europe has not extended the political integration mechanisms essential to the progress of European integration, no enlargement should take place,” the paper notes.

According to Financial Times, France could lift its veto by making concrete proposals: the replacement of unanimity by qualified majority voting in two key areas — foreign policy and taxation. Once these two results are achieved, there would be no reason not to continue the enlargement process while remaining cautious.