On Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron issued a warning, saying, “Our Europe, today, is mortal and it can die,” and he challenged Europe to step up to the difficulties of a changed world.
“It can die and this depends only on our choices,” Macron said in a keynote speech, warning that Europe was “not armed against the risks we face” in a world where the “rules of the game have changed”.
“Over the next decade… the risk is immense of (Europe) being weakened or even relegated,” he said at the speech at the Sorbonne university in Paris, billed as the president’s vision for Europe’s future.
He called on Europe to break free from a “strategic minority” that had made it unduly reliant on the US for security and Russia for energy.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, he called the country’s actions “uninhibited” and claimed it was unclear where Moscow’s “limits” still applied.
He said the indispensable “sine qua non” for European security was “that Russia does not win the war of aggression in Ukraine”.
“We need to build this strategic concept of a credible European defence for ourselves,” Macron said, adding Europe could not be “a vassal” of the United States.
In the next months, he promised to solicit proposals from European partners, stressing the necessity for Europe to develop its own cybersecurity and cyberdefence capabilities.
Macron supported the notion of a European loan to finance this endeavor and stated that preference should be given to European suppliers when buying military hardware.
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