Macron woos Europe’s East but stays vague on Ukraine security guarantees
French President Emmanuel Macron sought to endear himself to Eastern Europeans on Wednesday (31 May) but repeated warnings that the bloc has been too reliant in defence matters on Washington and remained ambiguous about what security assurances the West could offer to Ukraine.
Speaking at the GLOBSEC think tank’s annual conference in Bratislava, Macron repeated his call for a more common “European defence” and a “European pillar in NATO”.
Both are indispensable for Europe “to be legitimate, whether we like it or not”, he said in a speech which one Elysée source described as a move to reach out to Central and Eastern Europe.
Since coming to power in 2017, Macron had coined the term “European strategic autonomy”, describing a state where the bloc’s members would emancipate themselves from other global powers in decision-making and gain autonomy.
The French president was heavily criticised for calling the NATO military alliance “brain-dead”, drawing a backlash from all around the continent, especially the East, where the threat of Russia is an integral part of politics.
“I had a harsh word for NATO in December 2019,” Macron said in his speech at GLOBSEC, “but today I could say that Putin has woken it up with the worst kind of electroshock.”
After seeking to reassure Eastern and Central Europeans over the Russian threats and Paris’ commitment to NATO, Macron then focused on the EU’s role in supporting Ukraine.
What security guarantees?
His address comes as Ukraine’s Western allies are preparing for a crucial NATO summit in Vilnius in mid-July, where they hope to find a roadmap to support Ukraine’s bid for membership and pledge long-term assistance, as well as revamp defence and deterrence plans and increase spending.
In Bratislava, Macron stressed Paris would be “in favour of giving Ukraine tangible and credible security guarantees,” without going into detail about what exactly those could look like.
“If we want a credible, lasting peace, if we want to have any weight against Russia, if we want to be credible with the Ukrainians, we have to give Ukraine guarantees to prevent any further aggression and include Ukraine in a credible security architecture, for ourselves,” he added.
Pressed by an audience question whether this would include supporting Ukraine’s membership in NATO, Macron replied:
“We have to build something between security provided to Israel and full NATO membership. It is not sure there will be consensus on full membership.”
For Ukraine’s NATO hopes, another vague pledge won’t do
Ukraine expects to get at least NATO security guarantees, rather than just another vague pledge about an ‘open door policy’, as Kyiv’s Western allies are preparing two key summits in support of the war-torn country.
Macron has previously been actively calling for a new “European security architecture”, which drew criticism from hawkish Central and Eastern European countries, who argued wartime is not a time for reshaping the world system and urging first to find a use for peace in the war-torn country, and seeing it as a peace offering to the Kremlin.
In Bratislava, Macron did not fail to stress France’s commitment to NATO’s Article 5, the mutual defence clause and the military alliance’s internal “security guarantee”, reserved for members.
Paris has sent about 300 personnel to Estonia and more than 1,200 troops to Romania as part of the reinforcement of NATO’s Eastern forward presence as a deterrent to Russia’s aggression against the alliance. It is also involved in Air policing above the Baltic states.
EU is ‘number one’
“Will the US administration always be the same? We cannot delegate our collective security to the American voters,” Macron said. “That is also what the United States has been asking us, to better share the burden”.
The comment echoed his recent interview on China, where he called for an independent European policy on Taiwan, to avoid being dragged into a conflict by the United States, which again caused a backlash against Paris.
In defence, Europe “must harmonise standards, develop a European industrial and technological base, decrease dependencies”, he said.
“We must rely on NATO’s interoperability but also build capabilities between Europeans, by knowing how to commit joint forces together, in the neighbourhood, cyber, space, and maritime areas,” Macron also argued in his 45-minute long speech.
“It is up to us, Europeans, to have our own capacity to defend ourselves and manage our neighbourhood, and not just on the Eastern flank.”
The EU is currently in the process of setting up a 5,000-strong force to help in times of crisis in the member states’ neighbourhood.
Paris will also be hosting a conference on air defence on 19 June, gathering all European defence ministers, the president said, following his proposal made at the Munich Security Conference in February.
Read more with EURACTIV
