Emmanuel Macron urged Europe to develop more strategic autonomy as a way to avoid the risk of turning 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 last week’s visit to China. “We don’t want to depend on others for critical topics,” Macron said in the interview, published on Sunday, citing issues such as energy, defense, social media and artificial intelligence. Similar comments were published by Politico.
During Macron’s visit to China, traveling with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, he sought to delineate a difference in relations compared with the US’s tougher approach to Beijing. Europe is looking to strike a balance by engaging with China on trade and investment while demanding respect for human rights and territorial sovereignty for Ukraine, among others.
Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu told Bloomberg News in an interview Monday 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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