The French president made a speech on Wednesday at the Globsec Regional Security Forum in Bratislava. Emmanuel Macron has outlined his wishes for the future of Europe. But what did the head of state say?
A Europe of defence
Emmanuel Macron said that a "Europe of defense", "European pillar within NATO", was "essential to be "credible in the long term", calling on Europeans to equip themselves with a "strike capability in depth" and to buy European weapons.
"It is up to us Europeans in the future to have our own ability to defend ourselves and manage our neighbourhoods," the French president said at the Globsec forum in Bratislava. "Our geography will not change", "Russia will remain Russia with the same borders", and "we must build a space" that "allows us to coexist in the most peaceful way, without any naivety, with the Russia of tomorrow", he pleaded.
Inventing new "formats" for enlargement
The French president also called on the European Union to rethink its governance and "invent several formats" to meet the accession aspirations of Eastern European and Balkan countries on Wednesday in a speech in Bratislava.
"This is the only way to meet the legitimate expectations of the Western Balkans, Moldova and Ukraine, which must join the European Union and to maintain geopolitical efficiency," he said on the eve of a summit of the European Political Community in Chisinau bringing together 47 countries.
Guarantees for Ukraine
Finally, Emmanuel Macron considered that the West must provide "tangible and credible security guarantees to Ukraine", by being "much more ambitious" than so far.
"This will be the subject of collective discussions in the coming weeks," between now and the NATO summit in July in Vilnius, the French president said at the Globsec forum in Bratislava. According to him, Ukraine "today protects Europe", and it is "endowed with so many armaments" that it is in the Western interest "that it has credible security guarantees with us in a multilateral framework".
- World
- NATO
- European Union (EU)
- Europe