France says Europe must ‘take charge of own destiny’
Paris: Europe must be willing to take charge of its own destiny, the French government spokeswoman said this week, as Donald Trump won the US presidential election.
“We must not ask ourselves what the United States will do, but what Europe is capable of doing. In a number of key sectors – defense, industrial recovery, decarbonization – we must take charge of our own destiny,” Maud Bregeon told the broadcaster RTL.
Later, French President Emmanuel Macron said he and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz would work on “a more united, stronger, more sovereign Europe” after the US presidential election. They would do this while “cooperating with the United States of America and defending our interests and values,” he said, on X.
Earlier in the morning, Scholz and Macron had spoken by phone about the US election, Berlin said. “It was agreed to coordinate closely with each other on this issue,” Scholz’s spokesman Steffen Hebestreit told Agence France-Presse.
Meanwhile, Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, who had just back from a visit to war-torn Ukraine, said, in comments to the media that “Europeans will now have to assume even more responsibility for security policy.”
