Macron and Merkel's Brexit Legacy Isn't Safe Yet
Cutting a trade deal with Boris Johnson, while standing up to Hungary’s Viktor Orban on the rule of law, calls for more than muddling through.
Can they keep the EU’s “Hamiltonian moment” from being a flash in the pan?
Photographer: John Thys/Getty ImagesThe European Union has a history of muddling through crises at the eleventh hour, preferring a fudged compromise to anything that might definitively drive a wedge between its members. With not one but two deadlocked negotiations facing cliff-edge scenarios, that’s likely what the bloc’s sparring partners are counting on. They might have to think again.
U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is holding out for Brexit concessions from the EU to help him sell a trade deal to his supporters at home. Meanwhile, Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Poland’s Mateusz Morawiecki are refusing to approve a 1.8 trillion-euro ($2 trillion) Covid-19 recovery package unless a condition that recipients have to respect the rule of law is weakened or scrapped. That proviso had been agreed in principle in a softer form earlier this year, yielding what many hailed as a “Hamiltonian” moment for the bloc.