‘Europe must develop its own autonomy’

BLOOMBERG

Emmanuel Macron urged Europe to develop more strategic autonomy as a way to avoid the risk of turning the European Union (EU) countries into “vassals” in the event of a global crisis such as a US-China confrontation.
“Strategic autonomy must be the battle of Europe,” the French president told the business daily Les Echos during his visit to China. “We don’t want to depend on others for critical topics,” Macron said in the interview, citing issues such as energy, defense, social media and artificial intelligence (AI).
Macron warned against what he called the “extraterritoriality” of the US dollar, which can force European companies to forgo business with third countries or risk sanctions violations.
“If the tensions between the two superpowers heat up…we won’t have the time nor the resources to finance our strategic autonomy and we will become vassals,” Macron told Politico.
“The question Europeans need to answer is, is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No,” Macron told Politico. “The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the US agenda and a Chinese overreaction.”
Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu has told Bloomberg News in an interview that he’s aware of Macron’s comments but he wanted to learn more about his engagement with Chinese President Xi Jinping before commenting on the matter.

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