The French president made a speech on Wednesday at the Globsec Regional Security Forum in Bratislava. Emmanuel Macron outlined his wishes for the future of Europe. But what did the head of state say?
A Europe of defense
Emmanuel Macron affirmed that a “Europe of defence”, “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 neighborhoods,” said the French president at the Globsec forum in Bratislava. “Our geography will not change”, “Russia will remain Russia with the same borders”, and “we need to build a space” which “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 membership aspirations of countries in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, Wednesday in a speech delivered in Bratislava.
“It is the only way to respond to the legitimate expectation of the Western Balkans, Moldova and Ukraine, which must enter the European Union and maintain geopolitical efficiency,” he declared, on the eve of a summit of the European Political Community in Chisinau bringing together 47 countries.
Guarantees for Ukraine
Finally, Emmanuel Macron felt that the West should provide “tangible and credible security guarantees to Ukraine”, being “much more ambitious” than hitherto.
“This will be the subject of collective discussions in the coming weeks”, between now and the NATO summit in July in Vilnius, said the French president during the Globsec forum in Bratislava. According to him, Ukraine “today protects Europe”, and it is “equipped with so many armaments” that it is in the Western interest “that it have credible security guarantees with us within a framework multilateral”.