European Policy

The self-declared European — sovereignty, defense, and the Franco-German engine.

The Sorbonne speech — 26 September 2017

Four months into his presidency, Macron delivered his founding European address at the Sorbonne, calling for a “sovereign Europe”: common defense capabilities, a eurozone budget, a European asylum office, and joint digital taxation. The Élysée published the full text.

The Franco-German engine

With Angela Merkel, Macron negotiated the Treaty of Aachen (signed January 2019), deepening Franco-German cooperation. In May 2020, the two leaders jointly proposed the EU’s pandemic recovery fund — the breakthrough that became NextGenerationEU, the Union’s first large-scale common borrowing.

Crises and doctrine

Macron’s 2019 “brain death of NATO” interview (Sayings) argued Europe could no longer rely on American protection — a doctrine vindicated, in his telling, by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, after which he positioned France as a backer of Kyiv while keeping diplomatic channels open.

Sorbonne II — 25 April 2024

Returning to the Sorbonne, Macron warned: “Our Europe today is mortal. It can die and that depends solely on our choices” — urging European rearmament, industrial policy, and strategic autonomy.

Source notes

Speech dates and contents follow Élysée publications (the 2017 Sorbonne text is an official Élysée PDF) and international press coverage. The NATO quotation is documented on the sayings page.