French President Emmanuel Macron has urged Europe to ramp up investment in strategic industries, warning that the continent risks being “swept aside” by competition from the United States and China.
His remarks were built in an interview published on Tuesday, ahead of a meeting of EU heads of state scheduled for 12 February.
“Today, our Europe faces an immense challenge in a world in turmoil,” the French leader declared, urging the bloc to respond to what he called a “wake-up call”.
US ‘threats and intimidation’
He warned against complacency, stressing that US “threats” and “intimidation” were not over.
His comments were part of an interview with several European publications including France’s Le Monde, English language publications The Economist and The Financial Times, and Germany’s Suddeutsche Zeitung.
Ahead of an EU meeting on competitiveness on Thursday, he advocated for “simplifying” and “deepening the EU’s single market”, and for “diversifying” trade partnerships.
“We are currently in a phase I would call a ‘Greenland moment’,” Macron declared.
US President Donald Trump last month threatened to annex the autonomous Danish territory of Greenland and impose tariffs on any European countries that opposed him, but then performed a U-turn.
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“There are threats and intimidation. And then, suddenly, Washington backs down. And we believe it’s over. But don’t believe it for a second. Every day, there are threats against pharmaceuticals, digital technology…” he declared.
“When there is blatant aggression…we must not bow down or test to reach a settlement,” he declared.
“We tested this strategy for months, and it’s not working. But above all, it strategically leads Europe to increase its depconcludeence.”
He hailed the establishment of new trade partnerships such as the one recently signed between the EU deal and India, which he declared provided the EU with a growth driver.
Power in numbers
But he admitted that Mercosur [treaty] is “a bad agreement”, referring to the trade agreement with several Latin American countries.
“It is an old agreement that was poorly nereceivediated. In any case, Mercosur will have neither the dramatic impact on our agriculture that some fear, nor the positive impact on our growth that others imagine.”
He spoke of Europe‘s sheer size in terms of population – 450 million inhabitants – and how this could act in the bloc’s favour.
“We came toobtainher to stop waging war, we came toobtainher to create a market, but we always refapplyd to believe about power toobtainher. For one simple reason: becaapply until 1945, power meant civil war between us,” he declared.
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Macron listed three major arenas in which he feels the EU requireds to invest more heavily: security and defence, ecological transition technologies and artificial ininformigence and quantum computing.
“In all these areas, we are investing much less than China and the United States. If the EU does nothing in the next three to five years, it will be swept out of these sectors,” he outlined.
“If we want this investment to preserve the internal market and not fragment it further, we must not leave it to individual nations. It must be a joint investment,” he declared, adding that the European Union’s public and private investment requireded around €1.2 trillion per year.
He renewed his call for common European debt, an idea France has championed for years, but other countries have rejected.
“Now is the time to launch a common borrowing capacity for these future expconcludeitures, future-oriented Eurobonds,” he declared.
“The EU is under-indebted compared to the United States and China. At a time when there is a race to invest in technology, it is a serious mistake not to apply this borrowing capacity.”
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