Emmanuel Macron’s ‘Confederation’ may be the perfect home for Brexit Britain

  • Date: 13-May-2022
  • Source: The Telegraph
  • Sector:Economy
  • Country:Middle East
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Emmanuel Macron’s ‘Confederation’ may be the perfect home for Brexit Britain

Emmanuel Macron has made a tantalising constitutional offer to Brexit Britain, even if it is couched in vague language and has no official backing from the European Union's institutions. He has revived François Mitterand’s plan at the end of the Cold War for a European Confederation. “Let us be clear, the EU cannot be the only means of structuring the European continent,” he told Euro-MPs this week . Macron proposes a constellation of democratic and liberal states that wish to trade and cooperate on friendly terms without having to accept the full EU package, with its ever more powerful executive in Brussels, and with a supreme court in Luxembourg acquiring hegemonic jurisdiction. What was deemed impossible during the bitter Brexit talks – and before that as the UK was dragged by perpetual treaty creep into a proto-superstate against its will – has suddenly become a fashionable possibility because of Vladimir Putin’s attempt to overthrow the European order by force. The UK was told that there could be only a binary choice: either in (or almost in without voting rights, like Norway); or out , and little different from Vietnam, Brazil, or Madagascar. Put crudely, the Barnier line was that any