10 March 2022

POLITICO: Ukraine war gives Macron’s drive for EU autonomy new impetus

Where France sees vindication, others fear Europe turning in on itself. Russia's war on Ukraine has given new momentum to Emmanuel Macron's push to make the EU more autonomous. But the Continent's leaders still need to thrash out what that means in practice.

The French president, who welcomes fellow EU leaders to Versailles on Thursday for a summit overshadowed by the war, has long argued the EU needs to become less reliant on others — when it comes to everything from its own security to the supply of semiconductors.

For Macron's government, Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine and its repercussions have dramatically illustrated its point — showing the danger of a Europe unable to defend itself militarily, heavily reliant on Russian energy and too susceptible to external economic shocks.

The war should push the EU “to reduce our interdependence with the outside world, to create not an autocracy but a form of European independence,” Clément Beaune, France's EU minister, said this week. "If this is the result of this crisis, it will be a success for Europe."

Some EU members — particularly economic liberals and countries with strong transatlantic ties — have always been resistant to Macron's buzzword of "strategic autonomy," fearing that it is code for dirigisme, protectionism and a ploy to get Europe to "buy French."

And when it comes to the war's impact on defense policy, a number of senior European officials are drawing a quite different lesson from Macron — namely that the U.S. is vital to the protection of Europe and that NATO is now more relevant than it has been for decades.

But even former skeptics are now embracing Macron's overall agenda, at least up to a point.

“We have to enhance our open strategic autonomy, something France has been urging for a long time,” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Wednesday at an event in Paris...

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