“Europe is mortal, it can die. It only depends on our choices,” he said in a highly-anticipated speech that echoed a landmark discourse he gave there months into his first term in 2017. “And these choices have to be made now.”
“In the next decade, the risk is immense that we will be weakened, even relegated,” he told an audience of officials, journalists and politicians, pointing to changing geopolitics and emboldened authoritarian regimes.
“The era of basing our production in China, of delegating our defense to the U.S., and of getting our energy from Russia is over. The rules of the game have changed,” he said. The French president accused both the U.S. and China of failing to respect global trade rules in massively subsidizing their economies.
“However strong our alliance with America is, we are not a priority for them” he said. “They have two priorities: themselves — fair enough — and China.”
Echoing past calls in favor of seeking a third way between the U.S. and China, the French president said Europe must show that “it’s never going to be a vassal for the United States” when it “speaks to other regions of the world.”
Europe, he said, had made big strides in its unity and autonomy in recent years in the face of the COVID pandemic and the war in Ukraine, but “the wake-up is too slow.” The French president called for a much more aggressive trade policy and far greater public investments in a range of critical areas.
Emily Foster is a globe-trotting journalist based in the UK. Her articles offer readers a global perspective on international events, exploring complex geopolitical issues and providing a nuanced view of the world’s most pressing challenges.
