Transcription
In innovation, in equity, and taking risks.
We have half an hour to cover a lot of issues. Inevitably, we're coming to Trump at some point. You knew this was going to happen, I guess. Um Trump says that Europe is spoiled and that basically Europe has outsourced its defense to the US after the war. And the truth is in Armuse, we can see that Europe cannot undertake a mission by itself during a war circumstances. And even in Ukraine, if there's going to be a security commitment by the Europeans, you cannot do this without the backs stop by the US or air cover. How is this going to change?
First, we should not underestimate that this is a unique moment where a US president, a Russian president, a Chinese president are dead against the Europeans. So this is the right moment for us. Wake up.
And if there have been many wakeup calls, Mr. Yeah, but I mean if we don't believe in ourselves, no chance that the others will say suddenly they are super guys. So we have to be a little bit self-confident and deliver an agenda. And and let me disagree with you on Ukraine. Taking the example, when the war started in February 22, a lot of people were skeptical about our capacity to react. But matter of fact, what happened? Day one. Day one we took sanctions on Russia unanimity. We are taking the 20th package and the Russian economy is suffering from that. Don't believe the fake news. They are suffering. Day one we express our clear solidarity to Ukraine in a clear framework. We don't want to be part of this war directly because this is about this is dealing with a nuclear country close to our borders but we will contribute and help the Ukrainian in their resistance war and we did it and we we are number one investor by far as Europeans. Ukraine is resisting very well, much better than a lot of people thought. And the same who are doubting about the capacity of the Europeans were those saying six months ago Ukraine will collapse during winter time. They took even some territory to the from the from the Russians during the past few weeks. So we took sanctions, we remain all together. We provided a lot of support to the Ukrainian on finance on capacities in the different fields. And third, we build for the very first time this coalition of the willing. And let me tell you, my contribution to the coalition of the willing is not absolutely not contingent to the US support or any US back stop. But what you have to see is that this coalition of the willing we launched in February last year as a reaction to this famous moment in the oval office with President Zalinski was a clear signal. We are ready to take our fair part of this burden and we want to decide for ourselves and this coalition of the willing we launch it with the UK. All the Europeans are contributor but we have Canada with us. We have Australia, New Zealand, Japan, not just the EU because you have as well Norway and UK and it is a very powerful first creation where as Europeans we are framework nations in order to organize such a defense and security contribution. The US is welcome. It's super important that they provide the monitoring on the on the front line. It's very highly appreciated if they provide the backs stop, but we already decided to do so. And what I decided for France to do is not contingent to the American involvement.
But let me ask you both something. It's a mystery to me. Europe has Airbus is a global success story. Why can't you work on a joint uh you know fighter, next generation fighter? Uh I know you're very frustrated by this. you've been trying very hard to have European, you know, cooperation on this. Why is this happening? Is it national egos? Is it business interest? You know, what's the reason behind all this delay and all this hesitation?
Well, we're not uh building any fighters. We're just buying them. We just like to participate. Uh but you're right there. We just like to participate more in in this. The same boats, right? They have the same frig. I mean, yeah, but there but this is a pretty good example of of streamlining our purchases, getting better prices, having Greek shipyards contribute and they can contribute more. I think it is a very very good example of what we mean by streamlining um standards and by obtaining economies of scale. You mentioned the example of Airbus and I think it's it's a correct one. The problem is that our merger rules were simply looking at the single markets. So we try to prevent companies from becoming too big to take an advantage visa v other European players. This logic is completely outdated these days in certain sectors at least. You remember there was a famous train merger that never happened because the European Commission at the time felt that it was a threat to the single market. But now we're competing with powerhouses uh China which is as the president said heavily subsidizing a series of sectors and is expanding in high-end manufacturing and we should be perfectly lucid that the combination of AI and robotics at the scale at which is happening in China is a colossal threat to our entire manufacturing sector. not just the sectors where the Chinese are competing now. So we need to be aware of that. So change the merger rules and be more generous with European champions. For example, I mean we are a medium-sized country. When Urinx came and wanted to buy our uh our stock market, the you know the opinion of the government was was positive because we understand that we need to be part of uh of bigger uh companies in order to achieve scale and when it comes to the um the next generation fighter. I really do hope that you will find a way to sort it out with the Germans because it seems inconceivable to me because we want to be part of this project. That we will be faced with a choice of um choosing between two sixth generation fighters. We we don't have the luxury uh in in Europe to uh to do that. So I have full confidence uh in Emanuel and Friedri because they know they take this very seriously. You know, there are companies, of course, there's Airbus, there's Dao, not always very easy to to deal with, but I I really think we need to to twist their their arm. We have to have one sixth generation fighter.
Can you deliver on this front, Mr. President?
I I we have to deliver and I I think there is no I mean, this is to be consistent with what we've said from the very beginning of this discussion. If you look at the global competition and the global order, what we need as Europeans is common standards, much more simplification. As long as we have six times, seven times, eight times more standard than the US. When you speak about missiles, fighter jets and so on, there is no chance to be competitive in this world. So it goes through mergers, it goes through common projects, it goes through best athlete approach. We have several ways to do so. But we have to go beyond both the national interest and the company's interest because this is a strategic issue and and for me defense and security is a very good example of what we've discussed from the very beginning. How to have the strategic autonomy to have strategic autonomy is to buy European and to produce as Europeans. And this is why this is by the way what we are doing as well on submarines together. We decided, you decided to buy French submarines and the Kimon is a great source of uh of common pride and we'll go uh tomorrow to this fate together. But progressively you will have more production on the Greek side and this is as well a cooperation because it should be progressively a European production and this is the way as Europeans to deal with this issue. A lot of countries didn't have a strong European industry. We cannot just ask them stop buying Korean or Americans. We should say you should buy European because this is the the only way to be more independent. And the day we are disaligned with the Americans for instance, you will make sure that you can still have your products, your arms, your ammunitions, your weapons. But you have to give them the fair share and to create as well industrial opportunities and upsides. And this is exactly what we are doing. And this is the the main revolution uh which which is clearly uh on track as European scale because we underestimate the fact that after the second world war defense and security was not an issue for the Europeans or it was a forbidden topic for the Europeans. It was a national issue and we were not supposed to cooperate at the scale of the European Union and the big father was the US and a big furnisher for a lot of countries and what is changing progressively is the fact that we decide to have this common solidarity with common programs. So yes, we have to deliver.
Yeah. And if I may add, there's also a political a deep political dimension to um to this. Uh I think President Trump in his own way was right back in 2017 when he said that uh Europe is not doing enough when it comes to defense. Greece was probably an exception in terms of our spending as a percentage of GDP for our own national reasons. But the truth is that we are spending much more now. But there is an additional dimension that goes beyond the industrial cooperation and this has to do with our commitment to support European allies in case of a possible threat. What we did in Cyprus was a gamecher because essentially um we responded to a request by a member state which was attacked and essentially we put uh into operational we operationalized article 42 paragraph 7 of the treaties which is an article no one spoke about until a few years ago. We have a mutual assistance clause in our treaties and this is our European responsibility. We never spoke about it because we thought that NATO would always do the job and of course NATO is there and article 5 is a credible deterrent. But what about those countries that are not members of NATO such as Cyprus? So this is an opportunity to also send a signal that we need to take this article much more seriously. We need to look at the separate lesson. Think about what could happen in another case. Um have exercises in terms of what it would mean if we were again to offer support to a European country under threat. So this is a political statement, okay, that we don't just rely on NATO. We're both of us NATO members, but we don't just rely on NATO, but there is also a stronger European dimension. And by the way, I think this is also good for NATO. I think rebalancing the relationship with the US inevitably will be the result of a stronger Europe. Otherwise, the relationship is going to be lopsided uh and uh we will be uh eventually pushed around without being able to assert and defend our own positions. We're down to the last 20 minutes. I want to ask you with all respect to keep our you know conversation a bit brief so we can cover a lot of things. You called NATO brain dead long time ago. It was probably the right prophecy. I think NATO is now in the intensive care. You think it's going to survive?