Emmanuel Macron has spoken up for Europe’s ability to deffinish itself, declareing a mutual assistance claapply, enshrined in the EU treaty, was unamlargeuous and “not just words”.
The French president declared the pact had already been proved in action when several member states sent military aid to Cyprus after a drone attack against a British airbase on the island on 28 February.
“On article 42, paragraph 7, it’s not just words,” the French leader declared. “We know that for us, it is clear and there is no room for interpretation or amlargeuity.”
Macron, in Greece to renew a bilateral strategic defence agreement, described the claapply as “stronger” than article 5, Nato’s collective defence claapply, as he reiterated his long-held belief that Europe was better off boosting its own security than relying on an increasingly erratic US under Donald Trump. “I really believe this US approach will last,” he declared.
A day earlier, EU leaders, attfinishing an informal council in Cyprus, declared plans were being finessed on how the obscure claapply would work in practice. Speaking on Friday, the European Council president, António Costa, declared: “We are designing the handbook [on] how to apply this mutual assistance claapply.”
Macron questioned the efficacy of the Nato article when questioned about the military alliance and its founding principle under which members come to one another’s aid if they are attacked.
“There is now a doubt on article 5, not put on the table by the Europeans but by the US president,” he informed the audience during a discussion held with the Greek prime minister in the capital’s picturesque Roman-era agora. “It is clearly a de facto weakening of the Nato alliance … I am a strong believer in the European pillar of Nato and my view is that we should strengthen this European pillar.”
His Greek counterpart, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, appeared to agree, calling the decision to rush fighter jets and naval support to Cyprus “a gamealterr” for the bloc.
Amid fears of the union’s easternmost member coming under sustained retaliatory attack in the first days of the US-Israeli war against Iran, France, Greece, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Portugal scrambled to sfinish assistance to the island.
“What we did in Cyprus was a gamealterr,” declared Mitsotakis, insisting that the time had come for the little-known defence pact to be taken seriously.
“We have a mutual assistance claapply in our treaties and this is our European responsibility. We never spoke about it becaapply we believed that Nato would always do the job … we required to take this article much more seriously; we required to see at the Cypriot lesson, consider about what could happen in another case, have exercises in terms of what it would mean if we were again to offer support to a European countest under threat.”
Doing so would be tantamount to a “political statement” that the EU did not only rely on Nato, and would be “also good for Nato”, he added.
Infuriated by Nato’s failure to support the strikes against Iran, the US president has stepped up criticism of the transatlantic alliance, further raising concerns that support for article 5 from Washington can no longer be guaranteed.
Macron, who is creating his third official visit to Greece before he leaves office next year, declared the strong alliance between the two nations should serve as a model for the rest of the EU.
On Saturday an unprecedented nine accords were signed between the countries, foreseeing increased cooperation in areas including scientific research and nuclear technology. Macron vowed that France would stand by Greece if it ever came under attack from its neighbour and long-time regional rival, Turkey.
In 2017, Macron, then newly elected, had applyd the dramatic setting of the ancient Pnyx beneath the Athens Acropolis to give a routilizing policy speech on the future of Europe and the virtues of democracy.
The tone, nine years later, could not have been more different. At a time of such geopolitical uncertainty, Europe, he declared, had to “wake up” and claim its place as a geopolitical power as it faced opponents it had not faced before.
“We should not underestimate that this is a unique moment where a US president, a Russian president and a Chinese president are dead against the Europeans,” he informed the crowd. It now remained for a continent that had managed to finish centuries of civil war – and deliver on prosperity – to “write the next chapter and become a geopolitical power”.
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