European Council president Antonio Costa (left) and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen (right) with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the EU headquarters. Photo / AFP
European Council president Antonio Costa (left) and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen (right) with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the EU headquarters. Photo / AFP
Emmanuel Macron’s call for European defence autonomy is gaining traction as US reliability is questioned.
EU leaders approved plans to boost defences, with Germany suggesting changes to allow more defence spending.
As EU capitals line up behind the message that Europe must guarantee its own security, French President Emmanuel Macron could be forgiven for thinking “I told you so”.
Today, his stance is being largely vindicated as US President Donald Trump seeks a rapprochement with Russia and makes it clear Washington will not indefinitely underwrite Europe’s security.
Macron is one of a long line of French leaders to be wary of US pre-eminence in Nato. France, which, like Britain has its own nuclear arsenal, has since Charles de Gaulle was leader in the 1960s been more sceptical of the United States.
Now that European capitals are reaching a consensus that the US may not be a reliable partner, many are also conceding – with varying degrees of reluctance – that “Macron was right”, in the words of one diplomat.
The bloc’s 27 leaders gave the European Commission approval at a summit on Thursday to press ahead with plans to mobilise hundreds of billions of euros to boost Europe’s defences as a bulwark against Russia.
And a sea change is taking place in Germany, Europe’s No 1 economy, which has suggested strict EU spending rules should be changed to allow more long-term defence expenditure. Such talk from Berlin would have been unthinkable a year ago.
“Many European capitals have to learn – what we have done in several decades – in only a few weeks,” Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu told France Inter radio on Thursday.
“The risk for us French is to appear as being a little chauvinistic and a little ‘we told you so’,” he conceded.
France’s sense of vindication has indeed drawn pushback too.
“Apparently, some people have time to gloat about being right. The rest of us are busy making things right for Ukraine,” quipped one EU diplomat.
“It is not so much a question of who said it first and, in any case, many European leaders have spoken in recent years about strengthening European defence and security,” another diplomat said.
King Philippe of Belgium (right) welcomes Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the royal palace. Photo / AFP
Macron’s ‘judgment error’
Political analyst Sebastien Maillard, of the Jacques Delors Institute, argued Macron set the right tone on European defence, but made an “error of judgment about the Russian threat”.
“History proves Macron right on strategic autonomy,” Maillard said, but his big 2017 speech on the subject was “somewhat discredited” by failing to believe US, British and Polish intelligence predicting Moscow’s invasion.
A diplomat from an Eastern Europe state pointed out the region had been warning for “years” about the risks Russia posed.
“The French did not listen and did business with Russia. So, we could also say this is an ‘I told you so’ moment from the eastern perspective,” they said.
Another diplomat argued France had analysed the crisis correctly, but “did not apply their own ideas” including sending “more military aid to Ukraine”, although Paris has defended its record on support to Kyiv.
EU ‘aligned’
There also remains fundamental resistance in some quarters to Macron’s strategic autonomy push – on the grounds the bloc’s security apparatus is not ready to be wholly European.
When France argues for developing Europe’s defence industry, some critics also hear a bid to enrich its own companies.
“Of course one can say that Macron is right, yes, and we’re all very much aligned now,” an EU diplomat said.
But the diplomat argued “openness for third countries” was needed to “build our defence and our defence industry in the best way when it comes to scaling up – and that cannot only be European”.
Nonetheless, the emerging consensus around boosting Europe’s defences is seen as creating an opportunity for Europe’s two biggest economies to unite on a matter of vital importance.
Maillard recalled Macron’s autonomy push was “badly received” in Berlin in 2017.
Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz, who has called for a massive defence surge, could be just the partner the French leader had “lacked”, he said.
