Emmanuel Macron has been attacked for pursuing a “strategic autonomy” that only favours France’s interests over European ones. The French President has come under fire after he sparked fury over his comments about Europe’s response to China and the US over Taiwan last week.
The French leader was lambasted after he said the European Union should become a “third superpower” and avoid getting dragged into a clash between China and the US over Taiwan.
In a note sent to Express.co.uk, Italian MEP Marco Zanni blasted: “The events of the last week have confirmed two principles: first, the geopolitical dimension of the EU promised by the Commission in 2019 does not exist or is inconsistent, and today that promise remains in vain; second, Europe’s biggest sovereign and nationalist is Macron, who went to China and brought home rich contracts and agreements for French companies.
“Is this the concept of European strategic autonomy that the French President wants to pursue? Autonomy is an important issue for EU states, but there are some topics on which there can be no ambiguity.
“One of them is China: there can be no strategic autonomy, there are credible allies with whom we go side by side in global challenges and there are autocratic regimes like Russia and China from which we must differentiate ourselves.
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“There cannot be a third way, the EU must clearly decide who to side with, and without a doubt it must choose Western allies, because China is the greatest geopolitical challenge that the West is facing today and we cannot think of tackling it differentiating us from allies who have interests in common with ours and who have demonstrated that they care about those important values.
“Europe must understand how to approach Beijing and what Brussels is doing is not enough: Chips Act, Net Zero Industry Act, Critical Raw Materials Act are acts that will not concretely allow us to be independent from China.
“Despite what is being said, the EU’s dependence on China has dramatically increased in recent years also due to the green transition and we risk repeating another fundamental mistake by tying ourselves hand and foot to a dictatorship. What would happen to the EU tomorrow if China decided to invade Taiwan?
“We must reflect on this, on what tools we have to avoid repeating the same mistakes made in the past and which we are paying for today.”
Speaking before China launched large-scale combat exercises around Taiwan, Mr Macron said: “The question we need to answer, as Europeans, is the following: is it in our interest to accelerate (a crisis) on Taiwan? No.
“The worst 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.”
Macron spoke to reporters on his way back from a three-day state visit to China, where he spoke at length with President Xi Jinping, including about Taiwan, according to Macron’s office.
The remarks have drawn wide attention on social media, and experts raised questions about whether Macron’s views are in line with the European Union’s position and whether the bloc of 27 is able to become the “third superpower” that Macron says he hopes to build within “a few years”.
Without mentioning Macron, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki warned that some in Europe were too slow to heed the “wake-up call” on China.
He said: “You could see this over the past couple of weeks as some European leaders went to Beijing.
“I do not quite understand the idea of strategic autonomy, if it means de-facto shooting into our own knee.”
For its part, the White House has sought to downplay Macron’s talk of Europe as “an independent pole in a multi-polar world.”