French President Emmanuel Macron set the ball rolling ahead of Thursday’s emergency European Council summit in Brussels by calling for a “strategic debate” on extending the French nuclear umbrella over Europe. in a televised address to his nation the night before.
The proposal, announced in a televised address to the French nation on Wednesday night, echoes the idea raised a few weeks ago by incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU), who raised the possibility of involving either or both the French and British nuclear weapons to prop up Europe’s nuclear deterrence capabilities.
In his remarks, Macron also reiterated his call for European troops to secure peace in Ukraine once a ceasefire has been reached—something that every other leader, except British PM Keir Starmer, has rejected so far.
Macron’s speech followed a closed-door meeting between him and PM Viktor Orbán, where the French president was probably trying to persuade the Hungarian prime minister not to veto the Council resolution’s call for continued EU military support for Ukraine instead of peace negotiations, apparently unsuccessfully.
Macron also announced last night that he would double French defense spending by 2030, and threw his support behind the EU Commission’s giant €800 billion rearmament plan, urging EU countries to significantly boost their defense spending even at the cost of increasing their budget deficits and national debt alongside the “massive joint funding to buy and produce military equipment on European soil.”
All this needs to be done because Europe faces two great “threats” right now, Macron said: Russia and the United States. He explained that Russia has already turned the war in Ukraine into a “global” conflict by involving North Korea, and it would be “madness” to remain “a mere spectator” while Moscow gears up for future aggression.
The threat from America, in turn, lies in Trump’s “incomprehensible” trade war, which shows the U.S. can no longer be considered an ally, the French president suggested. “The future of Europe must not be decided in Washington or Moscow,” Macron declared, adding that the era of global peace is over:
Our generation will no longer reap the dividends of peace, but it is up to us to ensure that our children will one day benefit from the dividends of our commitments.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova responded to these statements by warning against any escalation that could jeopardize the peace process and calling Macron “detached from reality” by implying that Ukraine should continue the war with EU support. “For France, peace in Europe is not a priority,” Zakharova concluded.
Indeed, it does appear that the Brussels summit will revolve around finding ways to prolong, rather than end, the war in Ukraine. Even as President Zelensky has come around and submitted himself to President Trump’s peace plan two days ago by agreeing to the mineral deal and accepting U.S. moderation in the peace talks, most Western European leaders remain opposed to any quick settlement that they’d consider a ‘win’ for Russia despite all the lives that it could save.
Previously, Council negotiators agreed to remove a reference to the continued military support—and an additional €20 billion military aid package on top of the €60 billion already earmarked this year—for Ukraine from the draft summit conclusions due to fears of Hungarian and Slovak vetoes that would prevent the Council from adopting a unified position.
A somewhat modified statement was then re-added to the draft at the last minute, with the idea being that if leaders failed to strong-arm Budapest and Bratislava into supporting it, then it would be the personal statement of Council President António Costa instead.
Budapest, however, made it clear that it would not change its position no matter how hard others will try to persuade it on Thursday, calling the EU’s ‘peace through strength’ approach—supplying Ukraine with weapons as long as it takes for it to gain the upper hand—not only unrealistic but also morally wrong.
Instead, Hungary has been urging Brussels to follow Trump’s lead by opening diplomatic channels with Russia and help bring about a negotiated settlement, which is also supported by not only a clear majority (78%) of Americans but also the majority in most EU countries.
Otherwise, Europe only risks increasing global isolation. Not only has it cut itself off from Russian energy and is on the brink of a trade war with China, but now has also begun an ideological conflict with the U.S. and is “marching itself off a cliff” by escalating the war in Ukraine, as the Hungarian PM’s political director, Balázs Orbán put it on X.
