Your Excellencies, President of the French Republic, Mr. Emmanuel Macron, Prime Minister of the Hellenic Republic, Mr. Kyriakos Mitsotakis. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. My name is Lyanna Magra and on behalf of Kathimerini, it is my great pleasure to welcome you to tonight's very special event. President, we are gathered at the Roman Agora of Athens to reflect on the challenges that lie ahead for Europe's future at a time that feels like a critical turning point in global history. What role will Europe play in the chapters to come? In ancient Greece and later during the Renaissance in France, dialogue was not merely a form of communication but a cornerstone of democratic public life. Today, as democracy itself is being tested, such dialogue is more essential than ever. It is therefore an honor to introduce the speakers of this evening's discussion, the leaders of two countries that have helped shape Europe's past and that continue to play a central role in its future. Mr. President, Mr. Prime Minister, I would like to invite you to the stage for a conversation that will be moderated by the executive editor of Kathimerini, Mr. Alex Papelas. Thank you.
Well, Mr. President, I'm very glad to welcome you on behalf of Kathimerini. Mr. Prime Minister, thank you very much for being here. Well, Mr. President, we don't, we rarely agree on things in this country. Well, in every country these days, I guess, but one thing we agree on is that we're very thankful for your leadership and vision for Europe in these very difficult times. And also I thank you because you keep up a great tradition of France being a very close strategic friend of Greece and of leadership in that respect. So we thank you for both of those. There's a lot of doom and gloom as you know about Europe, and you are very concerned about, you say we have to stop sort of putting ourselves down. You said that in a speech. The thing is, are you worried that Europe is becoming a bit irrelevant these days? I mean, with what's going on in the world, especially now in the Middle East, do you have the feeling that we're becoming like an armed NGO or a think tank and, you know, we're becoming geopolitically relevant?
Thank you very much, not just for your words, but this welcome. And I want to thank you, Mr. Prime Minister, for this invitation, for this visit, and thank to all of you to be here. I think exactly the opposite. I think this very moment could be the European moment, and for several reasons. Number one, everybody in this world have a clear view that this is a world of disorder. Second, everybody sees that the number one power, the US, could be an ally for certain countries, but this ally is not so much certain and nobody is totally sure if this ally is reliable. And third, we were used to live in an international order and this international order is jeopardized by the two big powers. And what is the European Union? A place of predictability and reliability.
And I think it has a lot of price. When we have partners, we are with them. And by the way, Greece and France during the past few months, we acted day one with the Gulf countries when they were attacked by Iran. Yesterday we were with the president of the European Council right after his trip to the Gulf countries, and he reported to the whole group that Greece and France were celebrated by UAE and other countries because the very first day we sent air defense system. We have our Rafale. We sent additional Rafale to protect the countries. We sent some new generation. I mean the air defense system we have, and we contributed concretely day one to their defense, and I think you should not underestimate this point. So we are reliable, we are predictable, but more than that, I think when you look at the global picture, Europe represents, when you aggregate our capacities, a huge defense power. Europe represents a very relevant trade player. We represent something like 16% of the global trade, the same as China. US is 15%. We are an actual financial place. And by the way, we improved the links between Greece and France during the past few months with an important merger on the platform of Euronext. And if you take all the different categories, we are at scale.
Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. Prime Minister, do you agree with this? And I have a follow-up question, which is in order to be a great power, you have to have a strong economy. When you look at the numbers, there's a lot of concern in terms of GDP, investment, technology, and all this between the US and Europe. Is Europe doing enough to catch up?
Well, first of all, thank you for this invitation, Mr. President. And thank you, Emmanuel, for accepting to have this debate in this very unique location. And I think this debate and your question is particularly relevant at a time when indeed there is concern about the ability of the European Union to react to the changing sort of geopolitical tectonic plates. But I would agree with the president that this challenge also presents a unique opportunity for Europe, and we should not forget that Europe was forged through a series of crises. The progress of the European Union was never linear. You had periods of rapid change and then you had periods where not much happened. And I do believe that this is a time when it is really an opportunity for us to step up on two fronts. The first one is put more substance to this concept of strategic autonomy. I would argue that France and Greece have been at the forefront of this discussion. And when you look at the defense agreement that we signed in 2021, it was essentially the first clear demonstration of what we mean by cooperating at scale. It was just the two of us at the time, and of course we will renew this agreement tomorrow. But I think there's a greater understanding that we need to take more ownership when it comes to defense.
The second challenge is to strengthen our competitiveness. The Draghi report, which was read by all of us and applauded by all of us, I think presents a pretty accurate diagnosis of the problems but also the opportunities that we have as a united continent. We're a big market. We're a big trade power. We can do much more at scale, but we need to address issues related to the single market. We need to address issues related to energy. We have a completely fragmented energy market. We need to be much more competitive when it comes to energy. We need to move from words to actions when it comes to the savings and investments union, mobilize private capital in order to invest in our economy. And I would argue that at the European Council there is a general understanding that these are accepted principles. So now we need to move from agreeing to what we need to do to actually implementing these policies, and I think that the next years are really going to be make or break for Europe. And we had a discussion already today regarding the new budget. How much money can we actually commit to these ambitious goals? I think we will have a difficult discussion to convince maybe our more fiscally conservative friends of the European Union that we need to also mobilize European resources, not just national resources to implement these goals. But let me conclude my first remarks by saying that we had a similar discussion in 2020 when many countries, remember Angela Merkel was against the Next Generation EU until she changed her mind and she realized that this is really the time to mobilize European resources to address these challenges. So I think we have our work cut out for us over the next months, but I remain quite optimistic that at this inflection point Europe has a much more important role to play. And this is something which is understood both by the European Council, I think it's also understood by the European Parliament, it is understood by the Commission, but of course Europe does not always move at the speeds that many people expect, but when it does move, it can move big.
Now, one of the criticisms I keep hearing is that Europe has become the super regulator. Is this super regulation a way to defend European sovereignty or is this also a method, you know, by which basically you strangle innovation in this continent? And can you strike a balance?
This is exactly our challenge. I really believe that we overregulated some sectors, and as just said, it's clear that we have a challenge. And in fact it's scale, speed, and simplification. Scale, we have clearly to deepen the single market because this is our strength. Speed, we are clearly too slow. And simplification, we have to kill all the hurdles we have and sometimes we create. So it's clear that we overregulated some sectors. We still have too many national regulations and we have to improve that. And this is exactly one of the main conclusions of the Draghi report and the Letta report, and what we urged the Commission to put in place last year, and you have all this omnibus package. And by the way, a lot of us are doing exactly the same exercise at the national scale. But it's not sufficient, because you can have as well smart regulation, and let me insist on that as well. We need regulation sometimes to preserve our own industry and our own capacity to produce. China and the US, they do have regulation, but this regulation favors the national players. Most of the time our regulation is a burden on the European players, and we are too naive and too open on the non-European one.
This is why one of the challenges we have is to preserve the level playing field. Each time we put in place a regulation, we have to make sure that those who export towards Europe are submitted to the same regulations. It's not often the case, mirror clauses. But at the same time, we have to make sure that we preserve the interests of our players. And this is why we do advocate this concept of European preference, because today we are clearly attacked. One of the main challenges, if we want to deliver this agenda, is to be lucid on the current context. One of the main challenges of the European industry today, and in order to deliver this sovereignty agenda or the strategic autonomy, is about China. China today has overcapacities, is oversubsidizing a lot of sectors, and is literally killing a large part of the European industry, and we are clearly too slow to see that. But look at the automotive industry and the machine tool sectors. You are clearly a landslide approach of the Chinese. Last year they destroyed literally 250,000 jobs in Germany. We are less impacted by the way, because we deindustrialized in these sectors decades ago. But we have to react to that, and the only way to react to that is to put regulation in order to protect these key sectors.
Is European preference an answer to that, to the competition with...?
Definitely, safeguard clause, European preference. You have to restore the level playing field. You need a fair competition. Each time the competition is unfair, you have to protect your economy. And protection is not protectionism. I'm a strong believer in free trade. But the current world order, when you look at trade, is no more about free trade. On one side, you have overcapacities and over subsidies in China. On the other side, you have tariffs from the US. If we are in the middle, the only one to be naive and totally open and not to protect our industry, no chance to preserve it. And look at what the Chinese are doing on critical minerals, for instance, and rare earth. They are taking a lot of these capacities, killing the competition. When they still have competitors, they create dumping conditions to kill the existing capacities when they are in our hands. And when we are naive, our own producers go to the Chinese in order to be more competitive. If you don't have a European preference, a minimum percentage of European components, it's impossible to preserve our strategic autonomy. And when we speak about strategic autonomy, it's obviously about defense and security, but it's as well about industry, agriculture, technology, finance.
Let me end this part about the economy by asking this: you know, all these, like the capital market union and all these kind of reforms, to some people in this very fragmented political landscape they seem like a design of the elite. They don't really, you know, mean anything to the average person, and we live in a very polarized world. So how do you convince people, you both have difficulties in that in both countries, how do you convince them that this is a goal that you have to achieve that will make a difference in their own lives?
Well, first of all, let me just build upon what Emmanuel said in terms of regulation, because it's also an indirect answer to what you just asked me. The 28th regime, the idea that you can have one legal construct applicable to startups through which they can operate in the entire European Union, was a recommendation by Enrico Letta, something which was enthusiastically supported by us, and will become a reality very soon. This is an example, I would say, of smart deregulation but also regulation at the European level. I've been a big proponent of picking our regulatory battles smartly vis-à-vis the US, and I absolutely agree with Emmanuel. Two areas of great focus. The first is the protection of children and teenagers from social media and from addictive scrolling. I expect that the momentum that has been built at the national level will also be transposed to the European level very soon. I think we need to send a very clear signal also to the big tech companies that there are certain things which are off limits, that they cannot make money from capturing our children's attention because we know this is detrimental to their mental health. And the second battle which we will fight is preserving the public space. When people debated in ancient Athens, even then you had fake news, you had rumors, you had to manage the challenges of populism. But what is happening now is clearly getting out of control. So having proper rules in terms of the public sphere, even in terms of anonymity, addressing the problem of artificial intelligence and the deep fakes which are already present in our debate, this is going to be a big challenge for all of us, especially those of us who will have elections in the upcoming future.
Now coming to your question, I think that we need to be aware and lucid in terms of what the people are telling us is our main concern. If their main concern is affordability, which it is, the high level of prices, we need to frame our debate through that lens. And we need to explain to people that by improving competitiveness, this means better paying jobs. This would mean that free trade means lower prices, that having a functioning market will promote European well-being to the point where we can continue to finance our unique European welfare state. So I think you're right in terms of not making these debates very technical and not using the traditional Brussels language, and to explain to people why, for example, a free trade agreement can be good for our olive oil producers because we are opening up the market in India, for example, and that it will promote exports this way. And why supporting the startup ecosystem will mean bringing back French people or young Greeks from the US to actually work and build foundational AI models in Europe, because this means better wages, more productivity. So making this connection between the macro performance, what it means to improve productivity, and what this means for everyday people is critical. We've discussed this at the council. When we talk about productivity, it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean anything. People are struggling today with prices, and the answer to that is better wages, lower taxes, but you can only do that if you improve the productivity.
Okay, Mr. President, how do you make people understand that this is, you know, they have to take ownership of these reforms as well?
The capital market union was your question.
One of them is the capital.
We can take this one. It seems to be super technical, but we tried to deliver during a decade and it's not yet finished. Banking union, and now we launch this capital market union. We are fully aligned and I think it's super important. Why? As Europeans, we have more savings than the Americans. This is true. But these savings, because of our regulation and the lack of integration of these capital market unions, goes to the financing of our bond market. So it finances the debt of the states and governments, or our corporates, or it goes to the US to finance the US innovation because they do have a powerhouse and a good capital market. Having a strong capital market as Europeans means having the capacity to put our savings at the right place to finance innovation and activity creation. This is what we have to explain. And all of us, we want to have the best innovation of this world, and at the same time we want this affordability. We want to be part of the world. We want to create jobs. We want to have this innovation and we want to be free and independent. If you get all these innovations by buying products made on the other side of the world because they had the capacity to invest in this innovation, you are losing something. And clearly there is no reason why, regarding the amount of savings we have, we are not able to channel properly these savings to the financing of innovation and equity. This is exactly what is at stake with the capital market union. In order to do so, we have to simplify our regulation in order to build an actual European player or a series of actual European players, but kill all the barriers and build a real European player. This is the only way, plus simplification once again of some regulation in order to allow the savings to be invested in innovation, in equity, and taking risks.
We have half an hour to cover a lot of issues. Inevitably, we're coming to Trump at some point. You knew this was going to happen, I guess. Trump says that Europe is spoiled and that basically Europe has outsourced its defense to the US after the war. And the truth is, in practice, we can see that Europe cannot undertake a mission by itself during wartime. And even in Ukraine, if there's going to be a security commitment by the Europeans, you cannot do this without the backstop by the US or air cover. How is this going to change?
First, we should not underestimate that this is a unique moment where a US president, a Russian president, a Chinese president are dead against the Europeans. So this is the right moment for us. Wake up.
There have been many wakeup calls, Mr.
Yeah, but I mean if we don't believe in ourselves, no chance that the others will say suddenly they are super guys. So we have to be a little bit self-confident and deliver an agenda. And let me disagree with you on Ukraine. Taking the example, when the war started in February 2022, a lot of people were skeptical about our capacity to react. But matter of fact, what happened? Day one. Day one we took sanctions on Russia, unanimity. We are taking the 20th package and the Russian economy is suffering from that. Don't believe the fake news. They are suffering day one. We expressed our clear solidarity to Ukraine in a clear framework. We don't want to be part of this war directly because this is dealing with a nuclear country close to our borders. But we will contribute and help the Ukrainians in their resistance war, and we did it, and we are number one investor by far as Europeans. Ukraine is resisting very well, much better than a lot of people thought. And the same who are doubting about the capacity of the Europeans were those saying six months ago Ukraine will collapse during winter time. They took even some territory from the Russians during the past few weeks. So we took sanctions, we remain all together. We provided a lot of support to the Ukrainians on finance, on capacities in the different fields. And third, we built for the very first time this coalition of the willing. And let me tell you, my contribution to the coalition of the willing is absolutely not contingent to the US support or any US backstop. But what you have to see is that this coalition of the willing we launched in February last year as a reaction to this famous moment in the Oval Office with President Zelensky was a clear signal. We are ready to take our fair part of this burden and we want to decide for ourselves. And this coalition of the willing, we launched it with the UK. All the Europeans are contributors, but we have Canada with us. We have Australia, New Zealand, Japan, not just the EU because you have as well Norway and the UK, and it is a very powerful first creation where, as Europeans, we are framework nations in order to organize such a defense and security contribution. The US is welcome. It's super important that they provide the monitoring on the front line. It's very highly appreciated if they provide the backstop. But we already decided to do so, and what I decided for France to do is not contingent to the American involvement.
But let me ask you both something. It's a mystery to me. Europe has Airbus, is a global success story. Why can't you work on a joint, you know, fighter, next generation fighter? I know you're very frustrated by this. You've been trying very hard to have European, you know, cooperation on this. Why is this happening? Is it national egos? Is it business interest? You know, what's the reason behind all this delay and all this hesitation?
Well, we're not building any fighters. We're just buying them. We just like to participate. But you're right. We just like to participate more in this. The same boats, right?
The same frigates. I mean, yeah.
But this is a pretty good example of streamlining our purchases, getting better prices, having Greek shipyards contribute, and they can contribute more. I think it is a very, very good example of what we mean by streamlining standards and by obtaining economies of scale.
You mentioned the example of Airbus, and I think it's a correct one. The problem is that our merger rules were simply looking at the single markets. So we try to prevent companies from becoming too big to take an advantage vis-à-vis other European players. This logic is completely outdated these days, in certain sectors at least. You remember there was a famous train merger that never happened because the European Commission at the time felt that it was a threat to the single market. But now
We're competing with powerhouses. China, which as the President said, is heavily subsidizing a series of sectors and is expanding in high-end manufacturing. And we should be perfectly lucid that the combination of AI and robotics at the scale at which it is happening in China is a colossal threat to our entire manufacturing sector, not just the sectors where the Chinese are competing now. So we need to be aware of that: change the merger rules and be more generous with European champions. For example, we are a medium-sized country. When Euronext came and wanted to buy our stock market, the opinion of the government was positive because we understand that we need to be part of bigger companies in order to achieve scale. And when it comes to the next-generation fighter, I really do hope that you will find a way to sort it out with the Germans, because it seems inconceivable to me—we want to be part of this project—that we will be faced with a choice of choosing between two sixth-generation fighters. We don't have the luxury in Europe to do that. So I have full confidence in Emmanuel and Friedrich, because they know they take this very seriously. You know, their companies, of course, there's Airbus, there's Dassault—not always very easy to deal with—but I really think we need to twist their arm. We have to have one sixth-generation fighter.
Can you deliver on this front, Mr. President?
We have to deliver, and I think there is no—I mean this is to be consistent with what we've said from the very beginning of this discussion. If you look at the global competition and the global order, what we need as Europeans is common standards, much more simplification. As long as we have six times, seven times, eight times more standards than the US when you speak about missiles, fighter jets and so on, there is no chance to be competitive in this world. So it goes through mergers, it goes through common projects, it goes through best-athlete approach. We have several ways to do so. But we have to go beyond both the national interest and the company's interest, because this is a strategic issue. And for me, defense and security is a very good example of what we've discussed from the very beginning. To have strategic autonomy is to buy European and to produce as Europeans. And this is, by the way, what we are doing as well on submarines together. We decided—you decided to buy French submarines, and the Kimon is a great source of common pride, and we'll go to this frigate together tomorrow. But progressively you will have more production on the Greek side, and this is as well a cooperation, because it should be progressively a European production. And this is the way, as Europeans, to deal with this issue. A lot of countries didn't have a strong European industry. We cannot just ask them to stop buying Korean or American. We should say you should buy European, because this is the only way to be more independent. And the day we are disaligned with the Americans, for instance, you will make sure that you can still have your products, your arms, your ammunition, your weapons. But you have to give them the fair share and to create as well industrial opportunities and upsides. And this is exactly what we are doing. And this is the main revolution which is clearly on track at European scale, because we underestimate the fact that after the Second World War, defense and security was not an issue for the Europeans, or it was a forbidden topic for the Europeans. It was a national issue, and we were not supposed to cooperate at the scale of the European Union. And the big father was the US and a big furnisher for a lot of countries. And what is changing progressively is the fact that we decide to have this common solidarity with common programs. So yes, we have to deliver.
