The French president today deemed “indispensable” for a “European pillar in NATO” if Europe “wants to be credible in the long term” and called on Europeans to acquire a “deep attack capacity” and buy European weapons .
“In the future it will be up to us Europeans to have our own ability to defend ourselves and manage our neighbours”said Emmanuel Macron at the Globsec Forum in Bratislava, Slovakia, on the eve of a summit of the European Political Community in Chisinau, Moldova, which will bring together 47 countries.
Established in 2022 on the idea of the French Head of State, unveiled in a speech on Europe Day last May, the European Political Community is a platform for political dialogue and cooperation on issues of common concern and to strengthen the security, stability and prosperity of the European continent and does not replace any existing organisation, structure or process.
“Our geography will not change. (…) Russia will remain Russia, with the same borders. (…) We must build a space where we can live together in the most peaceful way possible, without any naivety.” , with the Russia of tomorrow”defended.
Macron, who in 2019 said NATO was “brain dead”, stressed that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, finally shook the Alliance awake “with an electric shock”.
“We must now help Ukraine in every possible way to carry out an effective counter-offensive. This is essential. This is what we are doing. We must intensify it, because in the coming months the possibility of a chosen and therefore lasting peace stands” added the French head of state.
While keeping Ukraine in the background, Macron underlined that the West must give Kiev “tangible and credible security guarantees” because it is “much more ambitious” than it has been to date.
“This will be the subject of collective discussions in the coming weeks,” he added ahead of the NATO summit in Vilnius in July.
For the French president, Ukraine “protects Europe today” and is “so well armed” that it is in the interest of the West “to have credible security guarantees with us in a multilateral framework”.
In the same speech, Macron also called on the European Union (EU) to rethink its governance and “invent different formats” to accommodate the accession aspirations of the countries of Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
“This is the only way to meet the legitimate expectations of the Western Balkans, Moldova and Ukraine to join the European Union, and to maintain geopolitical effectiveness,” he said.
Source: DN
