Imagine a strong and confident European Union (EU) run by a revived Franco-German alliance headed by President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Martin Schulz of Germany. This very possible scenario for 2018 would allow a renewed EU to be run by two dedicated Europeans, both of whom would have strong mandates from their home electorates, have experience on how to reform the sclerotic structure of the EU from within, and rebuild a Union that might rekindle the faith of the people in its transcendent message of hope.

The first round of the French election allows us to look ahead with more confidence to a more hopeful EU than has been portrayed by the doomsayers who have been hooked on the racist and narrow visions of Gert Wilders in the Netherlands, Marine Le Pen in France, and Frauke Petry of Germany’s AfD, not to mention Britain’s Nigel Farrage as he tries to find a new role without a party or a seat in parliament. And the advent of the appalling President Donald Trump in the United States made their threat seem all too possible.

But former US president Theodore Roosevelt in his famous inaugural speech had said that “the only thing we need to fear is fear itself”. Sadly the Europeans lost their nerve over the past few years as the EU institutions lost touch with their people, and the currency crisis battered the euro. German Chancellor Angela Merkel led a disjointed response to the crisis as she muddled through to save the euro. But she avoided the necessary structural reforms that the euro needs in the long term, and she avoided starting a thorough institutional review of the EU’s sprawling structure, in part out of fear of harming former British prime minister David Cameron’s chances of winning his referendum and in part out of fear of the racists on the fringe of European politics.

Earlier in the year, the far right was a serious threat to Merkel in the September 24 election when the Alternative for Germany (AfD) offered a coherent message. But the growing split between Petry, who has tried to drag her party towards the centre, and her co-leader Jorg Meuthen, who wants the AfD to stay a party of the extreme right, has started a disastrous fall in the polls, not helped by a senior party member calling for Germany to stop apologising for the Nazi era, who has been expelled by the party, but nonetheless there is still a review of his case.

Long way to go

All this has opened the way for the new leader of the Social Democrats, SPD, to go neck and neck with Merkel in his challenge for the chancellorship. Martin Schulz was a distinguished outgoing president of the European Parliament with an increasingly useful reputation for cutting regulation and bureaucracy. Then on January 24, the then-leader of the SPD unexpectedly handed the reins to his charismatic comrade and the SPD suddenly shot up by ten points in the opinion polls to come level with Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU). There is a long way to go till September, and all sorts of things can happen, but that applies to Merkel, as well as to Schulz, and many in Germany are tired of her familiar face and might welcome a change.

Such an outcome would allow the EU to focus on the essential changes that it needs to make. The decision-making process needs to refocus energy away from the unelected Commission to the Council where the member-states need to take responsibility for running their mutual organisation, and the parliament needs to become a much more involved partner in decision-taking, with a much better ability to answer to the people of Europe.

Most EU politicians have dodged these important structural reforms for some years, allowing the situation to get worse and worse. But after the elections of 2017, there cannot be any reason for further delay. This also applies to the management of the euro that cannot limp on without much more effective economic and fiscal convergence from the member states. This will require the EU to use its new and revived institutions to manage this process, and also ensure that richer members do not use the euro to get richer at the expense of the poorer members.

The new Macron-Schulz EU will not be an easy partner for United Kingdom Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit negotiations. There prime interest will be the reform of the EU, and the national interests of a would-be former member will not be anywhere among their major concerns. They also have deep knowledge of the detail of how the EU works, which will expose the British with brutal clarity.

Macron has said that he wants “a fair execution of Brexit” that protects EU and French interests, and he has advocated a “strict” approach to Brexit — a British decision that he has called a “crime” that will leave Britain in “servitude”, but he is clear that he intends to deny the UK “a tailor-made approach where the British have the best of two worlds”.