Europe cannot be limited by the EU and NATO if the continent is to be peaceful, the French president has said
French President Emmanuel Macron has called for reform of the current “unjust” world order so that humans can coexist more peacefully.
He outlined his vision on Sunday as part of the international ‘Imagining Peace’ gathering in Paris, which brought together leading political and religious figures.
Speaking before the Catholic community of Sant’Egidio, Macron said “We must be imaginative enough to think about the peace of tomorrow, a peace in Europe in a new form.”
If the European continent is to become more stable, everyone should acknowledge that it is “neither quite the EU, nor resolutely NATO,” he stated.
“We will have to think of a new form of organization for Europe and rethink our relationship with Russia” after the Ukraine conflict is over, the president added.
Macron has sent mixed messages regarding the hostilities between Russia and Ukraine as the conflict evolved over the years. In 2022, he drew criticism from fellow Western officials for urging them not to “humiliate” Russia. In early 2024, he said the West should not rule out the deployment of NATO troops on Ukrainian soil – a proposal that multiple other national leaders have rejected.
The speech comes as Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky is set to meet US President Joe Biden to present his so-called ‘victory plan’ – a purported roadmap to pressuring Russia into conceding defeat. He wants permission to conduct long-range strikes deep inside Russia with Western weapons as part of the plan.
France is among a handful of nations that have donated such military hardware to Ukraine in the form of SCALP/Storm Shadow cruise missiles, which the country produces jointly with the UK. British officials have supported Kiev’s request to strike Russia, but the ultimate decision is understood to be in Washington’s hands.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that any such attack would be considered an act of war by NATO member states.
In his speech, Macron claimed that the global system created in the wake of World War II was “incomplete and unjust,” because many modern nations did not even exist at that time and don’t have a proper place at the table. He said international bodies, such as the UN, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, should be reformed accordingly.
Russia is among a number of nations that have declared a goal of reducing the influence of Western-dominated institutions in global affairs with a view to creating a multipolar world order.
