Emmanuel Macron has described Donald Trump’s return as an “electroshock” that should force Europe to secure its own future as well as Ukraine’s.
In an interview at the Élysée Palace shortly after Trump agreed with Vladimir Putin of Russia to hold imminent peace talks, the French president championed the need for Europe to “muscle up” on defence and the economy.
He insisted that only Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy could negotiate on behalf of his country, warning that allowing “peace that is a capitulation” would be “bad news for everyone”, including the US.
“The only question at this stage is whether President Putin is genuinely, sustainably, and credibly willing to agree to a ceasefire on this basis. After that, it’s up to the Ukrainians to negotiate with Russia,” Macron said, adding: “We all need to stay collectively vigilant.”
The French leader has long argued that Europe should take on more responsibility for its own security, which would only be possible by increasing economic independence and reducing its reliance on the US and China.
He described Trump’s return to the White House as a jolt to push the EU to invest in its own defence, economic and technological revival. It meant abandoning a fiscal and monetary framework, first agreed by the EU in 1992, which he described as “obsolete”.
“This is Europe’s moment to accelerate and execute,” he said, while warning of the risk of failure for the EU. “It has no choice. It is running out of road.”
Whether Macron can rally other European countries to his programme is an open question, especially since he has been badly weakened at home and in Brussels by the political paralysis that followed last year’s snap election. France’s depleted public finances also limit its own ability to make necessary investments in defence and other priorities.
Nonetheless, the French president endorsed the Trump administration’s position that it was Europe’s responsibility to ensure Ukraine’s security, saying it stemmed from a generational and bipartisan shift in America’s foreign policy priorities away from Europe and towards Asia.
US unilateralism did not start with Trump’s return to power, Macron added, noting that he “did not receive a call” in advance from the Biden administration about its “Aukus” nuclear submarine deal with Australia and the UK or about its withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“What Trump is saying to Europe is that it is up to you to carry the burden. And I say, it is up to us to take it on,” Macron said.
While many European leaders reacted furiously to Trump’s talks with Putin on ending the war in Ukraine, Macron appeared more sanguine. Having spoken to Trump by phone earlier in the week, Macron said he was “not surprised” by the US president’s move.
He said Trump had created a “window of opportunity” for a negotiated solution, where “everyone has to play their role”.
The US role is to “restart this dialogue” and take the initiative because Trump brought an “element of strategic disruption”. He said it would be up to Zelenskyy “alone” to discuss “territorial and sovereignty issues”. And “it is up to the international community, with a specific role for the Europeans, to discuss security guarantees and, more broadly, the security framework for the entire region. That is where we have a role to play.”
Other European allies have denounced Washington’s apparent concessions to Putin before talks have even begun, including ruling out Nato membership for Ukraine and describing a full restoration of its territorial integrity as “illusory”.
But Macron was careful not to criticise, noting that — at the time of the interview — it was US defence secretary Pete Hegseth who had said Nato accession for Kyiv “was not a realistic outcome”, not the US president. (Trump later said he thought membership was not “practical”.)
Macron has been leading discussions among European allies about how to guarantee any peace deal, including the possibility of deploying troops to Ukraine to deter further Russian aggression.
Zelenskyy has said only a force of 150,000 to 200,000 troops with US involvement would deter Russia from attacking again. A deployment on such a scale would be next to impossible for Europe’s depleted militaries.
Macron said while it was too early to talk about numbers, such a large deployment was “far-fetched”, adding: “We have to do things that are appropriate, realistic, well thought, measured and negotiated.”
Asked about Trump’s threat to annex Greenland, Macron said the US president’s concerns about security of maritime routes in the Arctic were “respectable” but should be addressed collectively by allies in Nato. He said he had asked Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte to develop a strategy for Arctic security, including through possible joint military operations.
As for Trump’s proposal to redevelop Gaza, having evicted its 2.2mn-strong population to neighbouring Arab states, Macron was more blunt. Expelling Gazans would be “extremely dangerous”.
“For me, the solution is not a real estate solution. It is a political solution.”
Trump’s designs on Gaza and Greenland were examples of the “extreme strategic uncertainty” the world was now living in, Macron said. It demanded a radical rethink of how the EU and its member states operate.
“It is an electroshock. We need asymmetric shocks, we need external shocks. It is an exogenous shock for Europeans.”
It would help bring lucidity to those in Europe who still thought that they could live in a state of “strategic dependency”.
“This model, that is saying you have the Chinese market as an outlet, you have the American umbrella for our security and you have cheap Russian gas to be able to produce, forget all three.”
For Europe to accomplish the “strategic wake-up” that Macron pleads for, it will need to both boost defence and rekindle now stagnant growth with a burst of deregulation and economic integration of everything from capital markets to energy to enable the EU to reap the benefits of its size.
On defence, Macron said Europe must build its capabilities so it can act “even when the US is not involved”.
Yet even three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, change within the defence industry has been halting. Although production capacity of munitions and missiles has risen, European defence companies remain too fragmented to produce at scale.
Countries also remain wedded to their national defence companies, and are often wary of joint development programmes, and even more wary of cross-border mergers that could create European defence champions.
Once again, Macron urged Europe to wean itself off reliance on buying US weaponry, a long-held priority of France, saying partners should be buying the Franco-Italian SAMP-T air defence system. He said it was “better” than the Patriot, the US equivalent, already used by several EU countries.
“We must also develop a fully integrated European defence, industrial and technological base,” Macron said. “This goes far beyond a simple debate about spending figures. If all we do is become even bigger clients of the US, then in 20 years, we still won’t have solved the question of European sovereignty.”
To enable European countries to invest more in their defence, Macron argued for more “innovative financing solutions”, which could include more common EU borrowing as was done during the pandemic. So far Germany has remained staunchly opposed; Macron said he hoped that stance could evolve after German federal elections on February 23.
Europe’s challenges were as acute now as they were during the pandemic, he said. To address them, Europe needed to liberate itself from deficit caps under the EU’s growth and stability pact, which requires countries to maintain deficits below 3 per cent of GDP. “It is obsolete,” he said of the EU rules. “The financial and monetary framework we live in is outdated.”
“Europe is under-leveraged,” given its need to invest in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, the green transition and security.
Macron also called for the roll back of EU regulations that he cast as onerous and unrealistic. This includes the EU’s corporate sustainability reporting directive, and looming fines on carmakers who have not met electric vehicle quotas, which he called “crazy”. He also warned that Europe should not handicap banks by applying stricter capital requirements since the US looked set to ignore internationally agreed rules.
Yet Macron demurred when asked whether the EU needed its own version of Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency where he has unleashed billionaire Elon Musk to slash government spending. “A drastic simplification is needed . . . It’s better to make bold, politically responsible decisions rather than to tear everything down.”
Macron admitted that it could take “five to 10 years” for Europe to beef up, time he no longer has with his term ending in 2027. With populists and the far right gaining ground in France and elsewhere in Europe, a chunk of voters are wary of the expansion of the EU’s influence on their lives.
But Macron still has faith in his ability to persuade. “I still believe,” he said, adding with a characteristically intellectual flourish: “I love the humanism of the Renaissance and the philosophy of the enlightenment. It is what made us. And I don’t think those ideas are old fashioned. I think on the contrary we have to reinvent them.”
