After a fiery speech about Europe last week, French President Emmanuel Macron has now called for a wide-ranging debate on the role of atomic weapons in a common European strategy.
First was the keynote speech of the French president, Macron, at the University of Sorbonne, where with the sentence "Our Europe can die" and the demand that Europe "impose respect", he caused wide reactions. Macron's proposal to strengthen European defense was welcomed by German politicians. Now Macron wants a debate on the role of atomic weapons in European defense. In an interview for the media group "Ebra" on Saturday (27.04.)
Macron emphasized that he wants to open the debate, "to include missile defense, long-range missile capacities and atomic weapons for those who have or have on their soil European atomic weapons." Macron asked, "let's open everything on the table and see what really protects us". France is ready to do more for European defense, Macron said. Since Brexit, France is the only nuclear power in the European Union.
The German-French project of an entirely new type of tank
Since the speech at the Sorbonne, Macron called for the strengthening of European defense, stressing that it depends on our decisions. He called for a "reliable" European defense. Macron declared that the nuclear threat that France possesses is an "element of the defense of the European continent that cannot be avoided".
Meanwhile, on Friday (26.04.) after long delays, the project of a German-French battle tank has taken another important step in its development. The German Minister of Defense, Boris Pistorius, SPD, and the French counterpart, Sébastien Lecornu, signed in Paris a declaration of intent that defines the distribution of tasks between the concerns of both countries. "This is another important step," Pistorius said. It is not about the further development of the current tanks, but about "something completely new".