From the Centre for European Reform, this is the CERR podcast.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the CER podcast. My name is Sophia Besh. I'm a research fellow here at the CER. And today I'm in conversation with Charles Grant, who is our director here at the Centre for European Reform. Hi Charles.

Hi, Sophia. Good to be here. We want to talk about your latest piece, which was on Macron. You called it,

Is Macron becoming isolated in Europe? And I'm just going to ask you a few questions about it.

In this piece, you wrote that when Macron became president, he had two main goals. The first was to reform

the French economy and the second to build a stronger Eurozone. How is he doing so far?

Well, he's doing well on the first goal, but I'm worried about the second goal. And of course,

he links the two goals because I think his plan was to reform the French economy, to give

himself credibility with the Germans and others, to take

his ideas seriously on Eurozone reform. He knows that the Germans have a very different view of

the Eurozone from him, because when he was economy minister several years ago, he tried and failed

to get the Germans to shift their policy on the Euro. But he thought, if I reform the French

economy, that'll give me more credibility

than Francois Hollande had, and so the Germans will have to give me some of what I want. And on that

first goal, he's doing quite well. He's done a serious labour market reform. He's reformed parts of the

education system, some reformers of unemployment benefits and training. He's busy taking on the railway

unions and seems to be winning

that fight to reform SNCF, the French Railway. So he's done quite well on that front. But as far as

I can see, that doesn't yet mean that the Germans are dancing to his tune on the Eurozone.

So why is Germany resisting Macron's plans for the Eurozone? Why is he not being rewarded for his reforms in Berlin?

Well, part of the problem is intellectual. The German financial and political establishment

has a different view of the economic fundamentals of the Eurozone from many people in France,

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