World should ‘take cue’ from, not criticise Europe, says Macron

MUNICH: France’s President Emmanuel Macron on Friday (Feb 13) defended Europe as an example to follow, as the continent seeks to rebuild strained ties with the United States.

“Everyone should take their cue from us, instead of criticising us,” he said at the Munich Security Conference, after US Vice President JD Vance used his address at the annual gathering last year to attack European policies on immigration and free speech.

“I believe that Europe is inherently strong and can be made even stronger yet,” he added.

There had been a tendency “to overlook Europe, and sometimes, to criticise it outright”, to vilify it “as an aging, slow, fragmented construct”, as “a society prey to barbaric migrations”, and even “as a repressive continent where speech would not be free”, he said.

Instead, “Europe is a radically original political construction of free sovereign states” that gave up centuries of rivalry and war “to institutionalise peace through economic interdependence”.

Now, “Europe has to learn to become a geopolitical power”, he added.

Macron said France supported US President Donald Trump’s “drive towards a negotiated peace” to end Russia’s war in Ukraine that started in February 2022.

But if a settlement is reached to end Europe’s worst conflict since World War II, the continent would need to “define rules of coexistence that limit the risk of escalation”, Macron warned.