LONDON — French President Emmanuel Macron said the Anglo-French partnership is entering a new era in which both France and the United Kingdom have a “special responsibility” to safeguard European security.
In an address to both U.K. Houses of Parliament on the first day of his state visit — the first afforded to any European leader since Brexit — Macron said it was up to both London and Paris to “defend the international order” in the tradition of wartime British leader Winston Churchill.
He made the call amid what he called the flouting of “international rules by destabilizing powers” which are “attempting to divide up the world to their advantage.”
“Our two countries have a special responsibility for the security of the continent,” Macron said. “What is at stake today in Europe is our ability to shoulder the responsibility to ensure our continent’s security ourselves to a greater extent.”
The French president has long called on Europe to seek more “strategic autonomy” and become less reliant on the United States, especially when it comes to European defense — a push that has times excluded the U.K.
But Macron’s call for Europe to “derisk” may fall on deaf ears in Westminster, with the U.K. still firmly attached to the special relationship with Washington under Donald Trump.
“We need to derisk our society and economies … We need to derisk excessive dependencies towards the U.S. and China,” he told lawmakers. Macron, however, added that he didn’t put China and the United States in the same basket.
Red carpet treatment
Macron spoke at Westminster after he and his wife Brigitte were earlier welcomed to Windsor by the King and Queen, where they led a carriage procession and had lunch in Windsor Castle. Macron’s trip is the first state visit since King Charles took the throne, and both the palace and Downing Street have rolled out the red carpet.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has addressed the U.K. parliament twice despite not being afforded a full state visit, while Donald Trump did not give a speech at Westminster during his 2019 state visit.
Macron used the address to underline his commitment to the “coalition of the willing,” the initiative spearheaded by the U.K. and France to protect any Ukrainian ceasefire, which the French president described in his speech as a “signal that Europeans will never abandon Ukraine.”
He also said European leaders needed to call for a ceasefire in Gaza without any conditions in order to demonstrate that “there is no double standard” when it comes to the Middle East, specifying that working towards the recognition of Palestinian statehood is “the only path to peace.”
That’s a bold message in the U.K., which has shied away from such a move. Questioned by MPs on the subject Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said only that he “hoped” Palestinian statehood would be part of any peace process.
France’s first couple will return to Windsor Tuesday evening for a state banquet. Macron will hold bilateral talks with Prime Minister Keir Starmer Wednesday, with tackling llegal cross-Channel migration expected to feature.
Addressing one of the toughest challenges facing the British premier, Macron promised further cooperation to combat the issue, saying: “We cannot allow our country’s rules for taking in people to be flouted in criminal networks to cynically exploit the hopes of so many individuals with so little respect for human life.”
Discussions of a so-called “one in, one out” migration deal between the two countries are ongoing, according to officials.
Macron also announced that France will loan the famed Bayeux Tapestry to the British Museum from next year, quipping that “it took probably more years to deliver this project than all the Brexit texts.”
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