| Abstract [eng] |
The paper “E. Macron‘s vision of European autonomy: 2017-2022 changes and drivers“ studies the changes that appear in the official speeches made by the president of France Emmanuel Macron regarding the topic of European autonomy from 2017 to 2022 as well as the drivers that underpin these changes. The relevance of this topic stems from ever changing geopolitical context which consequently incites discussions on the identity and autonomy of Europe, its capacity to act on its own terms and defend itself. With war coming back to Europe in 2022 by russia choosing to invade Ukraine, this topic emerged again with new relevance. The idea of European strategic autonomy is mostly put forward by France‘s president E. Macron and it is worthwhile to analyse how his vision of the European autonomy changed in addition to establishing the drivers of these shifts in his vision. France is one of the core countries of the EU, so it’s crucial to understand its rationale and plans for our common future. Bearing in mind the afore mentioned situation, the problem of this paper is: while Macron won the 2017 presidential election with an ambitious vision of European autonomy, it is not clear how and why he changed his approach to European autonomy in 2022. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to examine how Macron's vision of European autonomy has changed during his first and second presidential terms and what are the drivers that underpin these changes. In order to answer the questions how has Macron‘s vision of European autonomy changed and what are the reasons for these changes, the following tasks were formulated: 1. To outline how constructivist theory could explain the developments of Macron‘s vision of European autonomy; 2. To carry out a qualitative analysis of Macron‘s speeches and statements using discourse and content analysis methods; 3. Following a qualitative content analysis, identify the domestic and foreign policy reasons behind Macron‘s specific vision of European autonomy; 4. Summarise the changes seen and explain them. In total, there were 26 speeches of Emmanuel Macron analysed. The analysis showed that there were 4 main context changes, which were reflected in the president‘s speeches. These are: COVID19 pandemic, which started in 2020; growing Euroscepticism in France; migration crisis on the Eastern European border; the growing need for European space autonomy, which would be a competition to other great powers such as China or US. Moreover, the drivers, which make Macron reflect his vision of European autonomy, also stem from his wish to create a unique European identity that would entail common foreign policy goals and common security framework opposing the United States. The study is significant because it provides deeper analysis of Macron’s idea of strategic autonomy which entails much more than just a common defence framework – common foreign policy, autonomous industry, digitalisation, space force, ways to combat climate change, migration policy, etc. Moreover, the thesis contributes to further research of the European autonomy as it provides background for what is Macron’s vision of the European identity. This work would complement other research on the same topic and would permit to do a comparative analysis of different European visions and help to identify their drivers. The recommendations for future research are as follows: 1) to complement the discourse analysis by including more speeches from news websites as that would provide additional information about the background of an official speech and would allow for deeper understanding of the drivers behind it; 2) to compare Macron’s vision against that of another European leader and see the main common points and disagreements, try to find their reasons. |
