REPLAY - Revivez le discours sur l'Europe d'Emmanuel Macron à la Sorbonne • FRANCE 24

Ladies and gentlemen, ministers, prime ministers, European Commissioner, members of parliament, European deputies, Attorney General, Chief of the Defense Staff, Regional Prefect, Madam Mayor, Rector, ladies and gentlemen ambassadors, ladies and gentlemen in your various capacities. Seven years after the Sorbonne speech, I wanted to come here, to this same place, to reconnect the thread of our accomplishments and speak of our future, our European future, but by definition, the future of France. They are inseparable. Right here, in September 2017, I said that our Europe, too often, no longer wanted, no longer proposed, out of weariness or conformism, and the European spirit was left to those who attacked it. We then proposed to build a Europe that is more united, more sovereign, more democratic. More united to weigh against other powers and the transitions of the century. More sovereign so as not to have its destiny, its values, its ways of life imposed by others. More democratic because Europe is this land where liberal democracy was born and where peoples decide for themselves. I had then set a horizon, a rendezvous: seven years. Here we are. So, we have not succeeded in everything, and we must be lucid. In particular, when you wish to make our Europe more democratic, we must note that progress has been limited on this point, sometimes due to a reluctance to change the treaties, to change our rules, our collective organization. And even if there have been some innovations in this area, important conventions and reflections, we have not gone far enough. But there have been successes, particularly in terms of unity and sovereignty, which was not a given. Europe has also gone through unprecedented crises in this period: Brexit, of course, a conflagration whose deleterious effects we have since seen, and which, I have been able to observe, means that today no one really dares to propose leaving either Europe or the euro. The global pandemic, the sudden return of death in our lives. The war in Ukraine, the return of tragedy to daily life, and an existential risk on our continent. But despite that, and in a context that has always been, during these last years, one of acceleration of environmental and technological transitions which profoundly reshuffle the cards of our way of living and producing, our Europe has decided, it has advanced. And this concept, which could have seemed very French seven years ago, of sovereignty, has progressively imposed itself in European. And despite this unprecedented conjunction of crises, rarely has Europe advanced so much. This is the fruit of our collective work, and this through a few steps that I believe are historic, which we have accomplished in recent years. First, the choice of financial unity to emerge from the pandemic. I want to recall this here because nothing was said on this subject, obviously, before the pandemic arrived. But when we French proposed a common borrowing capacity, they said, 'Nice French idea, formidable, well, it will never happen.' And well, we first managed to build a Franco-German agreement a few weeks after the start of the pandemic, then we carried it in European to raise 800 billion euros. This step of common borrowing, in itself, was what the then Finance Minister Scholz, later becoming Chancellor, rightly called a 'Hamiltonian moment.' But it is a choice of a united Europe, whose direct consequences we have seen everywhere in our regions, in our municipalities, thanks to what we have done in European. We were able to carry recovery projects, support for our businesses, and SMEs everywhere in our country have been able to reap the fruits. Second decisive choice: it was the choice of strategic unity on subjects that had until then remained the sole responsibility of nations. Health. Commissioner Breton is here, who remembers, he who piloted with the President of the Commission and her colleague in charge of health a policy that did not exist, that was not provided for in the texts. To produce vaccines in European, to secure supplies and distribute them everywhere in Europe, we did it. And if France was able to vaccinate from the beginning of 2021, it is because there was this European reflex and this capacity to build this policy which, however, did not exist in our texts. We were not producing the vaccine on our soil, we French, let us have the humility to recognize it. It is through Europe and this surge that we were able to advance. The same way on energy: who would have believed that we could free ourselves from our dependence on Russian hydrocarbons, buy in common and reform our electricity market so quickly? And defense: who would have bet on European unity from the first day of the Russian aggression in Ukraine, and on massive military support from the European Union? And we did it. The third decisive step of these last years is that we have begun to lay the foundations for greater technological and industrial sovereignty. No other zone in the world would have accepted as much as we did to depend on others for vital products, essential components. From 2018, we launched an initiative with Germany to support our battery sector, then extended to hydrogen, electronics, or health. We also launched with Germany major projects: the tank of the future, the future combat air system, and with our Dutch friends on submarines, also structuring initiatives. But from the time of the pandemic, and especially from the first weeks after the Russian aggression against Ukraine, we built, at the Versailles summit, a real strategy of autonomy. Yes, this strategic autonomy that we spoke of at that time, assuming this concept in European. It is this choice to put an end to our strategic dependencies in key sectors, from semiconductors to critical raw materials. European texts were adopted, a policy of investment, securing, and relocation was assumed, which was unprecedented in our contemporary history. And for seven years, Europe has begun to emerge from this naivety, if I may say so, technological and industrial, just as it has also begun to correct its trade policy, even if on this subject, I will come back to it, we are in my view only halfway there. The fourth decisive step of recent years is that we have made the fundamental choice, and I believe unique, to think, prepare, and plan the great challenges of Europe. We have heard a lot of criticism, in particular of the Green Deal, which was adopted, pardon the Anglicism in this place. But Europe is the only political space in the world that has planned these transitions, by adopting directives on digital technology that allow regulating both content and the market, and by adopting a text that allows laying the groundwork for our energy transition and, in a way, building coherence in our European policy with regard to our international commitments. We have built a choice in transparency. Simply, now we must provide for the flexibilities of application in each country and, above all, the investment policy that goes with it. But we have laid down a European planning of these transitions, whereas everywhere else in the world, great powers have made commitments but have not begun to explain how they were going to respect them. And so these are foundations that must be seen as stable milestones, and I will come back later to how to articulate them so that they can be compatible with a policy of growth, full employment, and industrial development. The fifth decisive step of these last years is that Europe has begun to clearly reaffirm the existence of its borders. Europe is a generous idea founded on the free movement of people, and well, sometimes it had forgotten to assume and protect its external borders. Not borders as watertight fortresses, but as a limit between an inside and an outside. There is no sovereignty if there is no border. And we have, in doing so, despite the divisions that had blocked our progress in this area for nearly 10 years, conceived, in particular during the French presidency, a first agreement on asylum and immigration which has just been adopted, and I thank all those who made it possible. But which, for the first time, allows improving the control of our borders by establishing mandatory procedures for systematic registration and filtering at our external borders to identify those who are eligible for international protection and those who must return to their country of origin, and to improve cooperation within our Europe. This is an essential step of recent years. And then the sixth advance is that we have begun to rethink our geography within the limits of our neighborhood. Europe now thinks of itself as a coherent whole after the Russian aggression, by affirming that Ukraine and Moldova are part of our European family and are destined to join the Union when the time comes, as are the Western Balkans. I said it last year in Bratislava: it is up to us to ensure their European anchoring, to support now the necessary reforms to prepare this path, which only exists if they integrate the community acquis, and to reform in parallel our Union, which can only enlarge if it reforms itself in depth and simplifies. We have also thought, for the first time, about our links with everyone on the scale of the continent, with the European Political Community. This initiative, which we proposed in May 2022, precisely allows going beyond the framework of 27 and thinking about our Europe, from our British friends to Norway, passing through the Western Balkans, and on the scale of the continent, on a mesh that is geographically significant, to begin building concrete cooperations. Since 2017, all this has been possible thanks to the commitment and action of many who are in this room today. I want to salute the work of successive ministers, administrations, all the teams that in particular enabled the success of this French presidency of the first semester of 2022, but also to thank all the European colleagues who carried this ambition, our European parliamentarians who voted for it, and the ardent work of the Commission during these last years. It is a collective work that I have just retraced here in a very synthetic manner, but which has meant that this concept, which seemed strange, of sovereignty, has progressively imposed itself, and that yes, Europe has risen to these challenges during these last seven years. We have also done it with a method that is undoubtedly different, which was not just a Brussels method, if I may use this formula. I wished to go to all European capitals during my first term, all without exception. And we have also built particular links, tightened our ties with Germany through the Treaty of Aachen, with Italy through the Treaty of the Quirinal, with Spain through the Treaty of Barcelona, and tomorrow with Poland, also through a new treaty, to deploy an intergovernmental policy, to re-engage with our partners in Central and Eastern Europe, also to allow a new dialogue and formats from Weimar to the Med-9, to try to have this multiple geography, if I may say so, which creates particular affinities within this Europe, but from close to close allows it to advance. And so yes, we have done a lot in recent years. So, without this action, without these progresses of sovereignty and European unity, we would undoubtedly have been overtaken by history. And moreover, if we had reacted as we did at the time of the financial crisis, the situation would be dramatic. The financial crisis, we approached it divided and being not very sovereign, and that's why we took, dare I say, 4 to 5 years to resolve it, when it was resolved in less than a year in the United States of America, where it came from. The crises we have experienced, we reacted to them quickly, in a united manner, which allows us today to stand together and to be here. But is it enough? Can I present myself before you with a self-satisfied speech saying, 'There, we have done everything well, formidable, Europe is strong, let's go, we continue'? Lucidity and honesty command us to recognize that the battle is not yet won, far from it, and that on the horizon of the next decade, because it is this horizon that we must seize, the risk is immense of being weakened, even relegated. Because we are in an unprecedented moment of upheaval of the world, of acceleration of great transformations. And my message today is simple. Paul Valéry said at the end of the First World War that we now knew that our civilizations were mortal. We must be lucid about the fact that our Europe today is mortal. It can die. It can die. And that depends solely on our choices. But these choices are to be made now, because it is today that the question of peace and war on our continent is being played out, and of our capacity to ensure our security or not. Because the great transformations, that of the digital transition, that of artificial intelligence, as well as that of the environment and decarbonization, are happening now. And the reallocation of factors of production is happening now. And the question of whether Europe will be a power of innovation, research, and production is being decided now, or not. And because the attack on liberal democracies, on our values, against, I say it in this place, what is the very substrate of European civilization, a certain relationship with freedom, justice, knowledge, is being decided now, or not. Yes, we are at a tipping point, and our Europe is mortal. Simply, it depends on us. And this is based on very simple observations to document the gravity of my remarks. First, we are not armed against the risk that is ours, despite everything we have done that I have just cited. We have before us a crucial issue of pace and model. We have embarked on a wake-up call. France itself has doubled its defense budget. We are in the process of doing it with this second military programming law. But on the scale of the continent, this awakening is still too slow, too weak in the face of the generalized rearmament of the world and its acceleration. The Sino-American tension has led to an increase in arms spending, technological innovation, and the increase in military capabilities. We now have disinhibited regional powers that are also increasing their capabilities: Russia, Iran, to name only two. And Europe is in a situation of encirclement, pushed by many of these powers at its borders and sometimes within it. And so yes, we are still too slow, not ambitious enough in the face of the reality of this movement. And in a context, we must look at it, whatever the upcoming deadlines, the United States of America has two priorities: the United States of America first, and that is legitimate, and the Chinese question next. And the European question is not a geopolitical priority for the years and decades to come, whatever the strength of our alliance and the chance of having today an administration very engaged on the Ukrainian conflict. And so yes, this era where Europe bought its energy and its fertilizers from Russia, had its production done in China, delegated its security to the United States of America, is over. And so we have begun profound changes, but we are not at the scale, because the rules of the game have changed. And because the very fact that war has returned to European soil, but that it is waged by a nuclear power, changes everything. Because the very fact that Iran is on the threshold of acquiring nuclear weapons changes everything. First change of rules. The second is that on the economic level, our model as it is designed today is no longer sustainable. Because we legitimately want to have everything, but it no longer holds together. We obviously want the social, and we have the most generous social and solidarity model in the world, that is a strength. We want the climate, with decarbonized energy, I said it, but we are the only geographical space that has adopted the rules to get there. The others are not going at the same pace. And we want trade that benefits us, but with several others who are beginning to change the rules of the game, who massively subsidize, from China to the United States of America. We cannot sustainably have the most demanding environmental and social standards, invest less than our competitors, have a more naive trade policy than them, and think that we will continue to create jobs. That no longer holds. And so the risk is that Europe experiences a decoupling, and we are already beginning to see it, despite all our efforts. GDP per capita has increased in the United States by nearly 60% between 1993 and 2022, that of Europe has progressed by less than 30%. And this even before the United States of America decided on the Inflation Reduction Act, and therefore a massive policy of attracting our industries, subsidizing all green industries and technologies. So we have today a challenge: to go much faster and to review our growth model, because there too the rules of the game have changed. They have changed in a simple way. The two leading international powers have decided to no longer respect the rules of trade. I say it in very simple terms, but that is the reality. Since the Inflation Reduction Act, whereas for 20 years we all collectively said, 'We integrate China into the WTO, and then our objective is that, deep down, the second commercial and economic power follows our rules,' it is as if the first economy in the world had suddenly decided that it was going to do things its own way. That is what happened. And so we can no longer hold our objectives. The risk is obviously our impoverishment, and impoverishment is dramatic for a continent like ours, which in addition has the most demanding social model and which takes the most from the wealth it produces. And then the third observation that underpins the importance of the moment we are living through is the cultural battle, that of imaginaries, narratives, values, which is more and more delicate. We have long thought our model irresistible: democracy spreading, human rights progressing, European soft power triumphing. Well, democracy continues to be attractive for many in the world, but let us look at things lucidly. Our liberal democracy is more and more criticized, with false arguments, with a form of inversion of values, because we let it happen, because we are vulnerable. But everywhere in our Europe, our values, our culture are threatened. Threatened because people come to contest their fundamentals, thinking that, in a way, authoritarian approaches would be more effective or attractive. Threatened also because our dreams, our narratives are less and less European, and because everywhere the content to which our children, our adolescents are exposed is more and more American or Asian, belonging to the digital surge that occupies our lives, and on which I will come back later. And so yes, our Europe is in the process of being more and more contested in its capacity to be attractive, in its political model, with, in my view, many bad reasons and false arguments. It is above all much less powerful in its capacity to produce great narratives, and great narratives that make the planet dream, and it consumes more and more narratives produced elsewhere, which does not allow us to build the future. And it is these three observations, this geopolitical and security observation, this economic observation, this, deep down, cultural and intellectual observation, that lead me to say today that, deep down, the question of our sovereignty in its very content is today even more important than yesterday. But what does it mean to be sovereign in this tipping point of the world? What does it mean to be sovereign when I tell you that Europe can die? It is that we must respond to these three challenges of the time, to this acceleration of History, to its dramatization. And so the solution is in our capacity, because the rules of the game have changed on each of these points, to take massive strategic decisions, to assume paradigm shifts, paradigm shifts, and, deep down, to respond to them through power, prosperity, and humanism. And it is on these three points today that I would like to come back. And I believe that it is through power, prosperity, and humanism that we give content, in a way, to this European sovereignty, and that we allow, and will allow Europe, yes, to be a continent that does not disappear, a political project that holds up in this world and at this time when it is threatened more than ever. Power, first. A powerful Europe is simple: it is a Europe that makes itself respected and that ensures its security. It is a Europe that assumes having borders and that protects them. It is a Europe that sees the risks to which it is exposed and that prepares for them. For that, we must, in a way, emerge from a form of strategic minority. Why? Because implicitly, we were in a way conceived like that. Many European countries had, from the end of the Second World War, often had it imposed on them to delegate their security to others, because we did not want to see them rearm too quickly. And as I said earlier, everything that is strategic in our world, we had somewhat delegated: our energy to Russia, our security for several of our partners, not France but several, to the United States, and also critical perspectives to China. We must take them back. That is strategic autonomy. And first by changing scale on defense. The main danger for European security is obviously today the war in Ukraine. The sine qua non condition of our security is that Russia does not win the war of aggression it is waging against Ukraine. That is essential. That is why we were right from the start to sanction Russia, to help the Ukrainians, and to continue to do so, to have the chance to have the Americans by our side for that, and to constantly increase our aid and to accompany. Simply, I fully assume the choice in this matter on February 26 last in Paris to have reintroduced a strategic ambiguity. Why? We are facing a power that is disinhibited, that has attacked a European country, but that is no longer in a special operation and that no longer wants to tell us what its limit is. Why should we every morning tell them what all our limits are strategically? If we say that Ukraine is the condition of our security, that what is at stake in Ukraine is more than the sovereignty and territorial integrity of this country, already key, but the security of Europeans, do we have limits? No. And so we must be credible, deter, be present, and continue the effort. But this war, involving a nuclear power that uses it in its rhetoric, is probably only the first face of the geopolitical tensions with which Europe must learn to live. And that is why we are experiencing a very profound change in terms of security. The most recent events have demonstrated the importance of anti-missile defenses, of deep strike capabilities, which are indispensable for strategic signaling and escalation management in the face of disinhibited adversaries. That is why what we need to bring out, and this is the new paradigm in defense, is a credible defense of the European continent. Then obviously, the European pillar within NATO, which we are building, of which we have convinced all our partners of the merits in recent years, is essential. But we must give content to what is this credible defense of Europe, which is the very condition for rebuilding a common security framework. Europe must know how to defend what is dear to it, with its allies whenever they are ready to do so by our side, and alone if necessary. Does that require an anti-missile shield? Perhaps. Is it by increasing our defense capabilities, and which ones? Without a doubt. Is it sufficient against Russian missiles? We must work on this point. But when we have a neighbor that has become aggressive, that no longer explains its limits, but that has ballistic capabilities on which it has innovated a lot in recent years, whose range and technology have transformed, that has nuclear weapons and has increased its capabilities, we can see that we need to build this strategic concept of a credible European defense for ourselves. That is why, in the coming months, I will invite all partners to build this European defense initiative, which must first be a strategic concept from which we will then deduce the relevant capabilities: anti-missile, deep strike, as well as all useful capabilities. France will play its full role there, we who have a complete army model, whose objective is to be the most effective army on the continent, and who are also equipped with nuclear weapons and therefore the deterrence capability that goes with it. Nuclear deterrence is indeed at the heart of French defense strategy. It is therefore, by essence, an essential element of the defense of the European continent. It is thanks to this credible defense that we will be able to provide the security guarantees that all our partners expect everywhere in Europe, and which will also have the vocation to build the common security framework, a guarantee of security for each. And it is this security framework that will allow us, the day after, also to build neighborly relations with Russia beyond that. And beyond this essential paradigm shift, the foundation for our Europe, it is a question of creating between European armies a true strategic intimacy. This involves launching a second stage of the European Intervention Initiative. I proposed it in 2017, it has been a real success. 13 member states have joined it. We have been able to build pragmatic, operational cooperations. We did it in the Sahel with the Takuba Task Force. It is also what provided the framework that allowed us to build an unprecedented European operation Aspides in the Red Sea. This capacity to conduct coalitions together requires, in effect, a common culture. This involves the development of a European security strategy, regional defense in the Mediterranean, Africa, Indo-Pacific, Arctic, to unify our visions and better distribute our forces among Europeans, but also by the creation of a European military academy to train future European military and civilian leaders in security and defense issues. We must also hurry in the implementation of the Strategic Compass that we concluded under the French presidency, and very particularly put in place a rapid reaction force to be able to quickly deploy up to 5,000 soldiers in hostile environments by 2025, in particular to come to the aid of our nationals. We must also, to do this, invest in new areas of conflictuality. Where we see it, in the hybrid war that Russia is waging against us, part of today's war is already being played out. Where our infrastructures are protected, whether transport, hospitals, electricity networks, or telecommunications. I also wish that we develop a European cybersecurity and cyber defense capability. And even as we are all beginning to build these capabilities for our own armies, it is an unprecedented opportunity to immediately build European cooperations and to act in a European way in the face of these risks. You see, taking our responsibilities means deciding for ourselves and piloting our European action in defense matters, building a new paradigm, more intimacy, and concrete initiatives together. So for that, we already have frameworks, unprecedented partnerships. The British are natural, deep allies, and the treaties that bind us, that of Lancaster House, lay solid foundations. We must continue and strengthen them, because Brexit has not affected this relationship. Perhaps we even need to broaden them to other partners. And the European Political Community is certainly the right place to build this new paradigm of security, this additional intimacy, and to build this common security and defense framework. Finally, obviously, there is no defense without a defense industry. In this matter, it is a question of transforming the urgency of support for Ukraine into a long-term effort. This is what we call the war economy, which we are pushing. With the minister, the road is long, because we have, we must be lucid, decades of underinvestment in our own production. And deep down, the peace dividends have meant that Europeans have insufficiently produced and invested, which has also created a very strong dependence on non-European industry. So faced with that, we must produce faster, we must produce more, and we must produce more in European. And that is fundamental. That is why I assume the fact that we need a European preference in the purchase of military equipment. Look at the European Peace Facility that we built. For the beginnings of the war, the funds were used to buy non-European equipment. An urgency criterion, we did not know how to produce everything in European, but there were also solidly established reflexes: it is always better to buy often American, sometimes Korean. But how do we want our sovereignty, our autonomy in the long term, if we do not also assume to develop a European defense industry? And so yes, for that we need to succeed in building a European preference, succeed in building European industrial programs, assume increased support from the European Investment Bank, and assume additional financing, including the most innovative, like the idea of a European loan proposed by Prime Minister Kallas. The objective of a European industrial defense strategy is indeed to produce faster, more, in European. So for us, who have a strong defense industry, it is an extraordinary opportunity, because we can also, if we know how to organize ourselves, push our standards, which we have done moreover in recent years with the Rafale, from Croatia to Greece. Who thought 7 years ago that the Rafale would become one of the solutions for European air defense? It is in the process of becoming it. But it is also what will push us to develop common standards in European, because one of the problems we have in European is that we remain too divided in terms of defense industry. Our fragmentation is a weakness. We experienced it in a cruel and concrete way during this war, where sometimes we discovered among ourselves, between Europeans, that our cannons were not of the same caliber, that our missiles did not correspond from one to the other, and that this reduced, in fact, our capacity to act together on the same theater of operations. So yes, this effort will also involve standardization, building major champions, and therefore European consolidation, and the organization of a real industrial defense policy. It is a necessity. We must assume it. You have understood: we need to go not simply to a new stage, but to truly build a new paradigm in defense, from the strategic concept to greater intimacy, to new common frameworks, to new capabilities. But this Europe, a power of defense, obviously relies on a diplomacy that goes with it. Diplomacy, each member state carries it, it is up to us, but we can multiply it and base it on greater European coherence. That is why I believe that we must continue in the years to come, in addition to this approach and this awakening of security and defense, we must continue to have partnerships with third countries. Yes, that is to build a Europe capable of showing that it is never the vassal of the United States of America, and that it also knows how to speak to all regions of the world, to emerging countries, to Africa, to Latin America, and not simply through trade agreements, but with real strategies of balanced, reciprocal partnership. This is what we wanted to build, from the European Union-Africa summit in the first half of 2022 to the European Indo-Pacific strategy, to show that we are a power of balance that speaks to the rest of the world and that refuses, in a way, the bipolar confrontation in which too many continents are settling. To have an Arctic strategy, to have a Pacific strategy, to have a Latin American strategy, and with the African continent, is to show that Europe is not simply a piece of the West, but indeed a continent-world that thinks about its universality and the great balances of the planet, that refuses the confrontation between blocs and wants to build its balanced partnerships. It is absolutely essential, and we must continue this path, which allows us on subjects of education, health, climate, the fight against poverty, to have a singular voice, as we did with the Pact for Peoples and the Planet, and to show that there is never a double standard with us, and that we have, there too, our autonomy. And a powerful Europe is also a Europe that controls its borders. I said it speaking of the adoption of the Asylum and Immigration Pact, which was a major advance. But I repeat it, in a moment when we all know that this question of borders and immigration shakes our societies, our country, in a legitimate way. It is even more important for France, because France is a country, pardon the use of this term which may seem technical, but of secondary movement, as they say. That is to say, immigration does not arrive in France directly. It enters the European continent, and in particular the Schengen area, through other borders. And so France, sometimes more than others, needs an effective European policy and good cooperation, because immigration begins at the European borders, not simply at the French borders. We are a country where women and men arrive who flee misery, who are sometimes also victims of trafficking networks, who sometimes seek legitimate asylum when they are freedom fighters, but who always arrive, whether through Spain, Italy, the Balkans, Greece, on European soil, then travel to our country. And so yes, for us more than elsewhere, without doubt, we need stronger European cooperation. That is why, after this Asylum and Immigration Pact, now we must implement it, because it offers us unprecedented instruments that we did not have: registration, monitoring, and more effective conditions for return to the country of first entry. That is already an unprecedented advance. But we must act with more firmness in terms of return and readmission for all the women and men who arrive on our soil and who are not meant to stay, who are not eligible for asylum. This requires a real European policy and real coordination. This will involve more cooperation with countries of origin and transit, more frank conditionality, and a relentless fight against the economic model of smugglers and human traffickers. It is as 27, and in particular within Schengen, that we must conduct these cooperations and build these policies. I do not want a policy of naivety, and we cannot be content to watch the ineffectiveness today of our return policies, because they are too divided. But I also do not believe in the model that is proposed to us today, which would consist of finding third countries on the African continent or elsewhere where it would be a question of going to accompany people who came illegally to our soil, who do not come from these same countries. We are in the process of creating a geopolitics of cynicism that betrays our values and that will build new dependencies and will prove totally ineffective. The key is simply to condition our visas, our trade preferences with the countries of origin and transit, and to make these countries responsible for migration policy. If we do it together, it will be an effective approach. Simply, today we are too divided. The return of irregular migrants to the country of origin must be one of the key axes of our visa policy and our trade preferences in terms of conditionality. We must also forge new operational partnerships to fight against migrant smuggling, human trafficking, to also mobilize Frontex, which will soon reach 10,000 border guards and coast guards, in order to support returns and go further in the ramp-up of this structure. We believe in it, I have always defended it, I continue to believe in it, even if sometimes those who have served it cast doubt on it. To protect its citizens, you see, Europe must also fight against threats and networks that ignore borders and states. And that is also a subject of European coherence. Beyond immigration, terrorism, organized crime, drug trafficking, hatred and online crime are subjects on which we must strengthen European action. That is why, first, I want the Schengen Council to become a real Internal Security Council of the Union. Our borders are a common good for Europe. A common good that we have created. We have managed to build a political form that has decided in a credible intergovernmental way, the Ecofin Council. Our borders are a common good. We must build a political structure that allows deciding among all the countries that share it, and to take decisions together on subjects of immigration, the fight against organized crime, terrorism, the fight against drug trafficking or cybercrime. Let us change governance to make it much more effective. We must also, within the framework of the Schengen Information System, go much further in sharing information to prevent the departure of terrorist fighters, returns from conflict zones, prevent radicalization, also have a real policy of removing terrorist content, but above all of removing hateful, racist, and anti-Semitic content. And it is in European that we will be able to obtain this from platforms that today do not keep their commitments on this subject, neither in terms of moderation nor in terms of removal. And it is in European, within the framework of such a council, that we can have an effective policy against organized crime and drugs, a real scourge that today particularly affects the most exposed countries because they have large ports and entry points, or sometimes also because they thought, for some, that the most liberal policies were those that would prevent criminalization, which is quite the opposite. We need to have a European approach there too on this subject. You have understood: this Europe of power is at once that of defense and the protection of our borders, and it is a profound paradigm shift on the fact that we Europeans, if we want to resist this change of rules, this escalation of violence, this disinhibition of capabilities on our continent and beyond, well, we must adapt in terms of strategic concept, means, and we must regain full and complete control of our borders and assume it. The second key element of the response is that of prosperity. Yes, if we want to be sovereign at the time of these profound transformations that I have evoked, we need to build a new model of growth and production. It is essential, because there is no power without a solid economic base. Otherwise, we decree power, but very quickly it is financed by others. There is also no ecological transition without a solid economic model. And there is no social model, which is a strength of Europeans, if we do not produce the money we then want to redistribute. And Europe has long been the main asset of our growth in an ordoliberal model of competition and free trade, and at a time when, deep down, the rules were very different: raw materials did not seem limited, there was no geopolitics of raw materials, climate change was ignored, trade was free and everyone respected the rules. That was the world we lived in until recently. And in a few years, everything has changed. Everything. Raw materials are limited: critical materials, energy. And for fossil fuels, we do not produce them on our soil, we are dependent, unlike the United States of America, many others. For critical materials, we need them, and China has begun to do its trade and secure many capacities. And for trade, as I said, the rules are changing de facto, a return to the state of nature. Yet we have clear objectives. We want to produce more wealth to improve our standard of living, create jobs for all. We want to guarantee the purchasing power of Europeans, it is the concern of all our compatriots, it is very concrete, it is the objective of our European policy. We want to decarbonize our economies and meet the challenges of biodiversity and climate. We want to ensure our sovereignty and therefore control our strategic production chains. And we want to maintain an open economy to remain the great trading power that we are. Our objectives are clear, but we are not there, and we cannot achieve them with our current rules. We are not there. We are not there because we are out of step with the recomposition of the world. We are not there because we regulate too much, we invest too little, and we are too open and do not defend our interests enough. That is the reality. So we must also build a new paradigm of growth and prosperity if we want to achieve the five objectives I have just recalled. Because if we do it with the current rules of competition policy, trade policy, monetary and budgetary policy, we will not succeed, and it will happen with a simple adjustment: we will lose production. And why, there too, do I have a sense of urgency? First, because I see this gap of the last 30 years between Europe and the United States, but because the reallocation of factors of production is happening now. Because the question of where green technologies will be, the question of where artificial intelligence and computing capabilities will be, is being decided in the next 5 to 10 years, without doubt perhaps more in the next 5 than the next 10 years. And so it is now that we must be at the rendezvous of History. And so it is now that we must stop over-regulation, increase investment, change our rules, and better protect our interests. That is the objective. That is the new model. And deep down, it is this prosperity pact that we must build, and it rests on a few very simple elements. First, we must produce more, and green and decarbonized production is an opportunity for reindustrialization and for maintaining our industries in Europe. We have seen it moreover in recent years, from hydrogen to semiconductors to electric batteries. France has recreated industrial capacity through the transition. And so we must stop opposing decarbonization and growth. If we know how to do it, and it goes through new sectors of investment, it works. And that is the model we are taking. We are on the way to becoming champions of batteries. The objective of 100% of battery needs in 2030 covered by European batteries, we will achieve it. And we will also catch up our delay in semiconductors with the objective of doubling Europe's market share by 2030. And as I said, the results in terms of employment, training, attractive and innovative territory, reduction of our dependencies, are there. And so green reindustrialization is what Europe allows, what it accompanies, and what will allow us to regain capacities, to also be the first continent with zero plastic pollution, to be a continent at the heart of decarbonization and electrification. The second condition is simplification. Since Jacques Delors created the internal market 30 years ago, we have deepened it, increased it by always more integration. That is a common-sense action. And the single market is an action of simplification: it is going from 27 systems of rules to one. Enrico Letta, in his report, has just proposed to continue this modernization and this work in the service of our compatriots and our businesses. I am in favor of us indeed continuing the single market in sectors that had been ignored until now: energy, telecommunications, financial services. It is essential because it is what allows us to reduce the fragmentation of our rules in these major sectors, and therefore to succeed in generating more innovation, reducing transaction costs, having more capacity for innovation, investment, and better serving our interests. We must also assume the evolution of our competition policy to bring out European champions and assume massive support for businesses in our strategic sectors with new investments as 27. I will come back to that in a moment. But simplification is therefore more single market, it is lifting the rules that are so many borders between the 27 to allow our start-ups to immediately have a domestic market that is the European market, because otherwise it is a real competitive disadvantage compared to a Chinese or American start-up. We have this strength: it is our internal market, it is 450 million consumers. The single market is a choice of simplification. But we must, in a way, also put an end to complicated Europe. It must be said: we have built useful regulations that gave milestones, benchmarks, caps, but we have also sometimes been much too detailed, preventing economic actors from projecting themselves into the long term and creating competitive disadvantages for our actors compared to their international competitors. We must have the courage of lightening, first by a review of thresholds and obligations weighing on very small businesses and SMEs. We must better involve our businesses, our citizens, our territories upstream, take into account their constraints from the stage of developing the standard, but also in their implementation. We must return to the principle of proportionality, that is to say, more ambition on the major issues, more support, more trust, and fewer texts. And to the principle of subsidiarity, which allows having European ambitions and rules for what falls under it, but leaving national flexibility in implementation. That is why also the next years, the next mandate, will have to go through several waves of simplification of our regulations, without removing anything from our ambitions and our milestones on the major points we have decided, but by simplifying implementation and allowing better support for our economic actors. The third condition of this prosperity pact is to accelerate on industrial policy. It was a dirty word still 7 years ago, I remind you. Industrial policy: really not the objective of Europe. And at a time when many are coming back to an interesting concept, which is the 'right to stay,' it is industrial policy that responds.

The possibility of producing everywhere on European soil, where in a way our Europe, which has relied too much on a model of competitiveness including intra-European competition, has created its own imbalances that cohesion policy had not sufficiently compensated, and which moreover has created the demographic imbalances that many of our partners are experiencing. I profoundly believe that industrial policy is a key milestone for our prosperity externally, but also for a good arrangement of European territory. Made in Europe is a subject of great Franco-German convergence. The Chancellor called for it in his Prague speech in August 2022. It is at the heart of our strategy for seven years, and it is at the heart of this Versailles strategy that we built in Europe. This industrial policy, as we have done in recent years by innovating—I took the Chips Act, passing through everything that was done on quantum technologies or others—must have production objectives on European soil, training actions, common investments, and consolidate what we have already done on strategic sectors: critical raw materials, semiconductors, digital, health. European policy there is also a response to the needs of our compatriots because it is this policy alone that will allow us to respond to the medicine shortages we are experiencing and also to the subject of access to food products. I will come back to this when talking about agriculture in a moment. So you see, yes, we must continue to consolidate this industrial strategy on these sectors. The method works; we must extend it to the strategic sectors of tomorrow without waiting for dependencies to be created. Let us decide now to make Europe a global leader by 2030 in five of the most emerging and strategic sectors: artificial intelligence, by investing massively in talents but also in computing capacities. We have 3% of global computing capacity—imagine, we Europeans, 3%. So it is a catch-up objective, but we need by 2030-2035 to reach at least 20% if we want to be credible actors. Quantum computing, space where we need to consolidate Ariane—and I say this at a time when we hear so many things—Ariane 6 is the condition for European access to space, an absolute necessity. But beyond new space, for manned space missions, we need a Europe of space ambition. Biotechnologies, obviously, and new energies: hydrogen, modular reactors, and nuclear fusion. The European Union must provide itself with dedicated financing strategies on at least these five strategic sectors. For this, we must have the right instruments. So we must define, invest in these sectors, act together, but we must also have the right instruments. We have started to have relevant instruments: our famous Important Projects of Common European Interest, the IPCEIs, which our industrialists know well and which were very structuring when we decided as early as 2018 with Germany to move forward simply. Here too, we must resynchronize. Post-Inflation Reduction Act and on Chinese investment, it no longer works because it is too slow, too uncertain. And so we must invent, in a way, the new IPCEIs—that is, we must give visibility to our industrialists, reduce delays at least by dividing them by two, but have mechanisms as simple as tax credit mechanisms, giving visibility over 5 to 10 years in industry, responding within very short deadlines of 3 to 6 months, and succeeding on the key sectors to support them. But we see it clearly, in sectors like critical medicines or chemistry, we are losing capacities today because our instruments are not fast, effective, and visible enough. But we must also assume different rules for industrial policy and competition policy. We must insert into our treaties European preference in strategic sectors, defense and space, because in fact our competitors have it. If there is no European preference in space, there will be no more space. Same for nuclear, which saw the US Department of Defense or Energy finance an emerging European actor. I have seen many American start-ups that are said to be solely the fruit of spontaneous genius of entrepreneurs being massively subsidized by American institutional policy. Let us do the same thing. We are in competition: European preference in strategic sectors, defense and space, and derogation from free competition to support key sectors in transition. On artificial intelligence, on green technologies, it is indispensable. It is the only thing that will allow us to respond to Chinese oversubsidies and American oversubsidies. Among the strategic sectors, there are two on which I want to say a few more specific words: energy and agriculture. Energy, because it is probably the one on which we have made the most reforms, but it is where we need the most fundamental transformations to come. We must assume building the Europe of the atom, assuming that the Euratom project, moreover, is part of the founding ambitions of the treaties of 1957. And the challenges are major, but we need it. Europe today, in its competitiveness problems, has a price competitiveness problem on the labor factor. Through our reforms, we try to respond to that, but given our social model, we know we have limits on that point. But we have a price competitiveness problem on energy because we have dependencies and because today we do not produce fossil hydrocarbons. The faster we make the transition, the faster we will regain this competitiveness. And so yes, decarbonized energy produced in Europe is the key to reconciling climate, sovereignty, job creation. And therefore we need a combined strategy of energy efficiency, deployment of renewables, and deployment of nuclear. This is what will make Europe a true electrical power, and that is the key. And today, we have made mistakes in recent years by starting to fragment the European market for hydrogen or electricity. We must be absolutely on technological neutrality. Basically, we need to build a Europe of free circulation of decarbonized electrons—forgive me for saying it like that, but that is exactly what we need to do. No matter if it is produced with renewable or nuclear; we don't care. If on European soil we know how to produce decarbonized electrons, it is a chance because it avoids carbon electrons and avoids those we import. And therefore we need technological neutrality. We need to assume building much more capacity in renewables and nuclear. We need to consolidate this nuclear alliance that we have built, which brings together about fifteen member states, assume this Europe of the atom, and invest in electrical interconnections in Europe. That is the key so that everywhere in Europe, industrialists and individuals can make contracts that have visibility and secure electricity supply that will be low-carbon, produced on European soil. The other strategic sector I wanted to come back to is agriculture. We have talked about it a lot in a somewhat defensive way, given the anger that was expressed. But the anger of our farmers was not anger against Europe. They know how much, particularly in France, Europe is nearly 10 billion euros in subsidies for our agriculture, or it is the only relevant market for us who also have an agriculture that is an exporting power. The anger was anger against overregulation, complexity, absurd standards, poor application of European and French law. So a very big effort made by the Prime Minister and ministers on this subject to build a roadmap that is already more than three-quarters applied, which is simplification and support. But Europe is key in agricultural matters because there too it is a subject of industrial policy and sovereignty. I said it from the Covid period: who would be crazy enough to delegate their food? We do not have the right to let food dependencies set in. We already had some; we started to repair them, particularly on animal proteins, which was an old geostrategic choice after the war where we delegated it, in a way, to other continents. But we must absolutely continue to consolidate our food sovereignty. And it is absurd when I hear so many colleagues that agriculture is each time the adjustment variable in trade contracts. No, no. We need to produce our food, continue to import and export, do it openly, but we need not to depend. The day you are totally dependent on vegetable protein, the day you are totally dependent on part of your food as Europeans, good luck. Then it will be no use having explained that we recreated sovereignty on semiconductors or the rest; imagine we go before our compatriots saying we did everything right, we just thought food would always circulate freely. There is a geopolitics of food as well. And so agriculture is a question of sovereignty, employment, production. We need a strong, simplified CAP that reduces complexity and administrative burden, but we need for our agriculture as for our fishing to support transitions sustainably, support the change of practices, the phasing out of phytosanitary products wherever there are technological solutions, renew our fishing fleets to decarbonize them as we have recently done for our other fleets. But we very clearly need to defend this sector and assume a policy of better consumer information, support to manage climate and environmental impacts, but also protect our producers against unfair practices, and protect them with a real homogeneous implementation at European level. This is what we are demanding through European health and control authorities that avoid unfair practices among Europeans, and a real European customs force that ensures that products we import, sometimes just relabeled in a port to then return to the European market, we ensure they have the same production rules as us when that is imposed. That is the key to an ambitious industrial policy. That brings me to the fourth aspect of this prosperity pact: the revision of our trade policy. And there is probably one of the most fundamental paradigm shifts in my eyes. Openness, yes, but defending our interests. And I said it cannot work if we are the only ones in the world respecting the trade rules as they were written 15 years ago. If the Chinese and Americans no longer respect them by oversubsidizing critical sectors, we cannot be the only ones doing it. It will not work, and moreover it is not working. And in this regard, we are too naive or with too weak a culture. We have a real lever: we are a market of 450 million consumers. That is an immense force. And so we must protect our health by strictly applying our sanitary standards. We must protect our models, our social model, by also applying our social standards. And we must protect our climate ambitions by defending our environmental standards. Otherwise, we will invent a continent that over-constrains producers on its soil and, through its trade policy, lifts constraints on the products it imports. That is great: we will become a consumer market where there will be no more producers compliant with our objectives, and which, through the dependencies thus created, will be forced to consume products that do not respect our standards. That is the reality. So if we want to be consistent with our ambitions, we need to readjust our trade policy very deeply. We have started to do so. The CETA we concluded with the Canadians, through the work we have done, through what we have adjusted, is a good agreement. I say this because we must yield to no demagoguery. I am grieved by what I have seen, including in the French debate in recent weeks. We must not turn towards the rejection of all trade agreements because then, good luck, welcome to demagoguery. All those who explain that trade is bad, they should explain to all our farmers who are winners with CETA versus Canada. But why are we winners with CETA? Because we put in mirror clauses, because it is a new-generation trade agreement that allows our cheese producers to export to Canada but, where there were different standards on meat, to avoid importing meat that did not respect European standards. But we are not for closure. Closure would be declining for European industrialists, farmers, and producers. We are for fair competition. And therefore a revised trade policy, as we did also with New Zealand: modern and fair trade agreements are those where respect for the Paris Agreement on climate is an essential clause, which includes strong clauses on the production conditions of certain sensitive goods, notably agricultural. That is the whole difference, particularly with the old-generation Mercosur agreement project as it has been negotiated so far. We must systematize the use of fair competition instruments. We must integrate mirror clauses in our trade agreements. We must launch a great reciprocity strategy to impose mirror measures in new European standards and review existing standards. We must, in doing so, also display the carbon footprint of products so that it is known to consumers, who will then realize that Made in Europe is almost always best for the planet. And let us be clear: if a good does not respect key standards, then it must not be able to enter the Union soil as if nothing were wrong. Clear rules, clear control, also with common customs forces. That is the only credible trade policy, which is in a way a fair protection of our borders and our producers, so as not to yield otherwise to deindustrialization. The carbon border tax is a tool that opens the way. We must extend it, complete it, improve it so that it cannot be circumvented and touches processed products. We must finally strengthen our economic security instruments. This is what I evoked alongside Prime Minister Rutte at The Hague: the security of our jobs, our companies, our creation, better protecting our industrial and intellectual property, better filtering extra-European investments in sensitive sectors, better protecting ourselves against physical attacks, for example against our submarine telecommunications cables or our European satellite constellations like Galileo, Copernicus, or tomorrow Iris. Economic security is also at the heart of this trade strategy. The fifth pillar of this common prosperity is the battle for innovation and research. Indeed, we must first have an obsession: productivity. And for that, we must be a great power of innovation and research. So we are, for many of our countries—I speak in this place of knowledge—already such a power, but we need to train even more talents. We need above all to keep them in our laboratories, our universities, our great centers, and attract others. And we must see clearly: in this regard, the risks exist. American but also Asian competition is there for that. For this, we must reaffirm the objective of 3% of European GDP devoted to research. It is a priority. We have reinvested, we French, but we must continue the effort on public funding, but above all on private funding with additional partnership research. But everywhere in Europe, we must now consolidate and show that it is a key element of this prosperity pact. The Horizon Europe program, which our researchers know well, must be strengthened by focusing on the most effective programs, notably the European Research Council. Changing paradigm in this area also means daring again to take risks. The European Innovation Council has allowed us to cross new thresholds in recent years, but we must go much further on breakthrough innovations. And we must assume going all the way to this European DARPA, which we are not yet fully endowed with, but which, with the best scientific teams in each discipline, by taking risks and therefore capital losses when projects do not work—because that is the very key to breakthrough research projects—well, assume to be a continent that invests in breakthrough innovation and the most advanced fundamental research. It is through these discoveries that quantum computers, tomorrow's materials, electronic chips, low-consumption batteries will be able to reposition Europe on the geopolitical map of growth. Whether it involves the phasing out of phytosanitary products, responding to the objective of health and the link between environment and human health, or providing a real response with a European research and investment plan for treatments against cancer, Alzheimer's disease, neurodegenerative diseases, rare and orphan diseases, Europe is the right scale for these major subjects of research, reinvestment, and common programs. We therefore need clear and ambitious objectives, and the key is training and the ability to keep and attract our talents. I have spoken a lot about rare resources, critical materials, but without doubt tomorrow even more than today, the rarest resource is human capital, talents. And that is why this policy of training, research, and higher education is absolutely decisive for our Europe. It must obviously be accompanied by a policy of deployment and development of our start-ups, with what we have started to launch with Scope Europe: talent and capital to be an innovative continent. And the last condition of this prosperity pact is precisely the capacity to invest. Forgive me for saying it like that: money. Yes, we have today in Europe rules of the game that are no longer adapted. Because if we take defense and security, artificial intelligence, decarbonization of our economies, C3s, we have a wall of investment. So all the figures have been articulated according to reports. Finally, I read all the reports; I look at what Mr. Draghi is writing, what the Commission has written. There is a consensus: everyone says it is between 650 and 1000 billion per year more. That is a lot. And we cannot postpone this investment because we cannot postpone our security. We must not cry over spilled milk. We cannot postpone these investments because they are being made now, and investment decisions are made now or not. So it is now in the coming decade that we must make this massive investment, and we are behind the United States and China. So this massive investment must, in a way, also go through a paradigm shift in our collective rules. There is a first thing that seems obsolete to me: we cannot have a monetary policy whose only objective is an inflation objective that fluctuates in an economic environment where decarbonation is a factor of structural price increases. We must lift the theoretical and political debate on how to integrate into the objectives of the European Central Bank at least a growth objective, or even a decarbonation objective, in any case a climate objective for our economies. That is absolutely indispensable. The second thing is that we obviously need to increase our capacity for common investment. We need, as I said, to invest several hundred billion euros per year more. So the answer we have had in Europe in recent years has been to give national flexibilities (state aid). That is not a sustainable answer because it fragments the single market; it is contradictory with what I said earlier. We need common capacity. And so we need again a shock of common investment, a great collective budgetary investment plan. We need subsidies. I do not want to preempt things here, and I want it to be concerted with all our partners. Is it a common borrowing capacity? Is it using mechanisms that exist today—European Stability Mechanism or others? But basically, we need to succeed in doubling the financial action capacity of our Europe, at least doubling it in budgetary terms. And so we need this public investment shock to invest public money in these sectors, which will require reopening the delicate question of the Union's own resources. I am in favor of it, and I think we must have additional own resources without ever weighing on European citizens: carbon border tax, revenue from the European carbon trading system, taxing financial transactions as France does, taxing multinational profits where they are really made, and using the resources from ETIAS, the tax paid by non-EU nationals when they enter the Union. There are lots of own resources that do not touch European nationals that should be used for this budget. And then beyond monetary policy, beyond our common budgetary policy which must be much more ambitious and stronger with this additional 1000 billion plan, we need to mobilize private investment and our private financing capacities more. Each year, our Europe has two main defects—I would even say three. The first is that it saves a lot. We accumulate savings; we are a very rich continent with very competitive actors. But because our capital market system is not integrated, this savings do not go to the right sectors and places. First defect. Second defect: we do not go enough into risk because we have an economy that is very intermediated—75% goes through banks and insurance—and we have given them rules that do not allow them to go into equity and risk. Third defect: each year, our savings to the tune of about 300 billion euros per year go to finance the Americans, or at least non-Europeans and especially Americans, whether through Treasury bonds or risk capital. It is an aberration. And so we need to respond to these three aberrations by having a real savings and investment market—that is, succeed in creating the elements of solidarity so that it works, that our investment flows, that all our capital market actors circulate savings so they are well allocated in our economy. So we try to move forward. We have started. I think we must give ourselves 12 months, no more, because we have been promising it for too many years. Either in 12 months we manage to build a system with single supervision, common bankruptcy rules, and elements of tax convergence to build a system comparable to what we did on banking supervision, or, as some propose, we may need to conceive a system like we did on competition, allowing more flexible development systems but creating circulation. I do not want to preempt the technical solution, but we need to create this indispensable union to be able to circulate capital. Second, we need to revise the application as made of Basel and Solvency. We cannot be the only economic area in the world that applies it. The Americans, who were the source of the 2008-2009 financial crisis, chose not to apply it to their actors. I am not for removing everything; I am not for returning to a culture of financial irresponsibility. I am just for putting risk culture back into the management of our savings. If there is no risk culture, there can be no investment in research, innovation, start-ups, our companies. And then I am for also installing European products and solutions so that our savings can go towards financing our economy. A true single market, a savings and investment union, a relaxation of rules that chase away risk, and European products that allow us to avoid this flight. As you have understood, what I am sketching here is truly a new growth and prosperity model that goes through simplification, assuming a policy of massive industrial decarbonation, a profound change in our industrial, competitive, and trade policy, especially a real research and innovation policy even more ambitious, and this change in our monetary, budgetary, and financial paradigm. So, to conclude, why do all this? As I said at the beginning, our Europe can die. It can die if it does not hold its borders and does not know how to respond to external risks in terms of security. It can die if it becomes dependent on others and can no longer produce to create its wealth and redistribute it. But it is at a moment where it can die of itself because we are returning to a time that our Europe has known. Peter Sloterdijk describes it very well in the lectures he is giving at the Collège de France, with that slightly ironic pessimism we know him for, saying that we are returning to those moments where Europe thinks its decline, doubts itself again. Our Europe does not love itself. When you see everything it has done, what we owe it, it is strange, but it is so. It would be too long here to say that there is, in fact, in our Europe structurally always this doubt about itself. We are the continent, the civilization that probably invented doubt and self-questioning, the culture of confession. And I believe he will come back to it in his lectures. And we are caught in doubts also because our democracy is shaken, as I said earlier in its rules, because our demographic decline is a very deep source of concern. And so the risk for our Europe would be, in a way, to get used to this depreciation. And that is why what I want to propose to you today, in a way, the promise I would like to seal, is to try nevertheless to defend this European humanism that binds us. If we want to protect our borders, if we want to remain a strong continent that produces and creates, it is because we are not like others. We must never forget: we are not like others. Camus had this magnificent phrase in his Letter to a German Friend: 'Our Europe is a common adventure that we continue to carry on despite you, in the wind of intelligence.' That is Europe: it is an adventure we continue to carry on despite all those who doubt, in the wind of intelligence. And what does that mean? It means being European is not simply inhabiting a land from the Baltic to the Mediterranean or from the Atlantic to the Black Sea. It means defending a certain idea of man that places the free, rational, enlightened individual above all else. And it is to say that from Paris to Warsaw and from Lisbon to Odessa, we have a unique relationship to freedom and justice. We have always made the choice to put man in the generic sense above all else, and from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, up to the exit from totalitarianism, that is what constituted Europe. It is the constantly reiterated choice that tells us we are different from others. It is not a naive choice that consists of delegating our lives to big industrial actors under the pretext that they are very strong. That is not consistent with the European choice and European humanism. It is a choice that refuses to control or delegate our lives to state control powers that would not respect the freedom of the rational individual. It is a confidence in the free individual endowed with reason. It is a confidence in knowledge, freedom, culture. And it is a constant tension between tradition and permanence on one side and modernity on the other. It is an imbalance. Being European is that, and it is this that we must defend: this humanism, so fragile but which distinguishes us from others. And I want to argue here that it is played out now. We must defend it because, as I said, liberal democracy is not an acquired right. I say it on this important day, and I think of our Portuguese friends, 50 years to the day after the Carnation Revolution. Freedom is conquered, and everywhere on our continent it is built through struggle, including until the beginning of this century. We never forget: it is not an acquired right; it forbids us from being lazy. And that is why we must continue to defend what is constitutive of the rule of law: separation of powers, rights of opposition and minorities, independent justice, free press, autonomous universities, and academic freedom. It is denied in too many European countries. That is why I defend here budgetary conditionality linked to the rule of law in the disbursement of Union funds, and we must still strengthen it with procedures of finding and sanctioning when there are serious violations. Europe is not a counter where you can choose the principles. That is why also we must strengthen our capacity to fight against interference and propaganda, especially in these electoral times. Our Czech friends experienced it, as our Belgian friends denounced it. But we have today a return on our soil of television channels, social networks, using a form of naivety in our rules that were made for actors who respected democratic civility. But there is a return of propaganda, false information that shakes our liberal democracies and advocates another model. We must on this subject fight against it, impose full transparency, and above all prohibit these contents when they come to destabilize elections. However, there are all reasons to be optimistic when we see Poland. A few months ago, when everyone told us everything was played out, no. Not only did it see the largest participation in its history in a democratic vote, but it chose again a party that is both patriotic and defender of liberal democracy. And so we must carry this fight for liberal democracy, political openness everywhere on European soil, and try as much as possible to Europeanize it. I cannot be longer here during the conclusions of the Conference on the Future of Europe. I defended citizen participation, citizen panels, the European Citizens' Initiative, European referendums. I think these initiatives must be developed in Europe; they are essential to give more vigor to a European demos and also allow these transnational lists, which are simply the possibility of having, at the time of European elections, a real European democratic debate. Look at the elections we have today: they are essentially national elections. That is the reality because we do not have a list across European soil. This idea has not yet, if I may say, sparked unanimity among our partners, to put it politely. But the key is that we cannot have a continent where institutions decide more and more with democratic participation remaining at the level of 1979. And we need audacity too for more European democracy. It will also be accompanied by revised rules. Here too, there is a very strong Franco-German agreement to go to qualified majority in matters of foreign policy and taxation. That is part of the indispensable reforms, even if we would need to go much further on this subject. But I will not burden you today. And above all, I said, defending this European humanism means considering that beyond our institutions of this liberal democracy to which we hold and which we must defend and strengthen, it is the forging of citizens by knowledge, culture, science that is played out in our Europe. Being European means thinking that there is nothing more important than being a free individual endowed with reason and knowledge. And at a time when we see reappearing skepticism, conspiracy theories, doubts about science and the authority of scientific speech, we have a responsibility as Europeans to defend it, teach it, defend free and open science, shared. We will carry this fight internationally, but we must also strengthen the instruments. Seven years ago, I proposed university alliances. More than fifty were created thanks to university presidents, students, and professors, and I want to thank you. It helps structure the circulation of knowledge, exchanges. We need to move to a second stage: consolidate funding but their integration, and move towards fully joint European degrees. European excellence also resides in know-how. That is why we must multiply Erasmus+ for apprenticeship and vocational training with an objective of at least 15% of apprentices in European mobility by 2030. Transmit also through the creation of alliances of European museums and European library alliances to facilitate partnerships, encourage digitization, improve circulation and access to works and books in Europe. Transmitting this European spirit is also about disseminating a common imagination. And I wish on this title that we make 'Arte' the reference European audiovisual platform, the platform of all Europeans, which can offer even more than today quality content distributed in all languages everywhere in Europe to promote the richness of our European cultural heritage, promote the learning of European languages, and defend our model of protection of rights and funding of artistic creation as we have consolidated in recent years. Transmitting the European spirit to younger generations is also giving them the opportunity to have a tangible experience of our continent—that is, travel, exchange. So beyond Erasmus and Erasmus+ for apprenticeship, very concretely, as Enrico Letta pointed out very well in his report, it is to be able to travel by train everywhere in Europe. Our capitals are not yet connected as they should be. The InterRail pass is a success; it must now be backed by a Europe of trains, which is as much a connection project as a cultural project—that is, a project for the circulation of students, youth, knowledge between capitals. And I wish for my part that it be based on a Europeanization of the 'Pass Culture'—which is not a French invention. You know how much we like to be chauvinistic, but it is an invention of Italy under Matteo Renzi that we copied. We tried to improve it; several others followed us. That is Europe: drawing inspiration from good examples. But now we must generalize it because this Pass Culture provides enormous access for the youngest and for many families. So you see, we have to assume still much ambition on this Europe of knowledge, culture, intelligence. But we must also defend it in the moment we are living, because we are here today in this university, in a physical place where we can exchange under the auspices of great minds, in a time and civility that is familiar to us. But no one can ignore that our lives today take place in another space: that of our children, adolescents even more, this digital space. And we Europeans do not have control over it. In this space, first we do not produce enough content. That is part of the ambition I evoke and defend. But we no longer even determine the rules. And this is a profound anthropological, civilizational change when today children spend hours in front of screens, when adolescents open up to culture, intimate life, emotional life through these screens and the content to which they can be exposed, when democratic debate is structured in this space—this digital space that we inhabit and which is basically the space we inhabit most in our time of life today—are we serious, we Europeans, to delegate it to others? No. And I deliberately tell you that it is a cultural and civilizational fight because it is there that our democracy is really played out, because it is there that public opinion is formed. A democracy where voting is free is great, but finally if this vote is influenced, if consciences are deformed, if choices are transformed by orientations made by some or others, what democracy do we have? And so I tell you with great force: it is not a technical subject; it is not a subject of public policy. The capacity to create a democratic digital public order is a question of survival for us. It is a question of survival to defend our humanism, because today basically you have two models imposing themselves. You have an Anglo-Saxon model that de facto chooses to delegate this living space to private choices. We will evolve, but trust: there are these large companies that have social networks and platforms; they have algorithms; everything seems very complicated, but we consumers like it; it seems efficient. But it is a choice that puts the citizen in a position of inferiority compared to the consumer. Then you have another choice: that of control, which says, faced with this disorder, this anomie, we control, state retake—that of China but also of several authoritarian powers that are moving towards this model. The humanist model, which Europe must develop, can only exist at the European level. It is a model that creates a democratic order: transparent, loyal, where we debate the rules and where we choose them. That is why I want to defend a Europe of digital majority at 15 years. Before 15, there must be parental control over access to this digital space because it is an access—if we do not control the contents, it is the fruit of all risks, deformations of mind that justify all hatreds. We must, as we do for our children—I say with a lot of common sense—would someone send their child into the jungle at 5, 10, 12 years old? No one, I think, who is sane. We protect them in the family; we accompany them to the doors of school and then college, and we hand them over to trustworthy people who will educate them. We then organize activities when we can so that they can learn more and emancipate themselves. And today, several hours a day, we open the door of the jungle, and the same child can be prey to cyberbullying, the same can be prey to pornographic content, pedocriminality. That is this space because it is not regulated and because it is not moderated either. Do you want me to tell you how many moderators in French each of these platforms and networks has? Not even ten for some. So we must take back control of the lives of our children and adolescents at the European level and impose digital majority at 15, not before, and impose on platforms moderation, closure of certain sites. And then we must much more ardently recivilize this digital space. Where we prohibit racist remarks, anti-Semitic remarks, hate speech, we must with the same force prohibit them in the digital space, where the presumption of anonymity leads to the disinhibition of hate. It is a civilizational and democratic fight. We must lead it at European level. It is essential. I put it at the heart of this battle we must lead. And then our European humanism is obviously also a humanism of dignity, of justice. We love freedom, knowledge, but we have this unprecedented taste for justice, equality, which distinguishes us from other continents. Equality between women and men is at the heart of this project. With Europe, we have accomplished a lot in terms of work-life balance for parents and carers, pay transparency, parity, etc. Today I wish we go further by enshrining, as we have done in our Constitution, the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, because equality between women and men is at the heart of this humanist project. It is precisely at the heart of what makes Europe. This Europe is also built on social cohesion—that is, a desire to build cohesion in our society, faithful to the legacy of Jacques Delors and his European program of aid to the most deprived. I propose creating a European solidarity program which, building on the European Social Fund, will support member state initiatives against all forms of precariousness and will socially accompany the transitions we are implementing. And so Europe must also provide itself with new instruments to support people and territories in this social transition. It is indispensable. Protect, accompany Europeans with this policy of justice and a guarantee of a Europe that allows the exercise of all rights: free movement, accessibility, fight against discrimination, and moving forward. And when we talk about justice, I will not open here the debate that I feel alive on the taxation of income because it is a good debate when we see the accumulation of wealth in the globalization we are living through. But my conviction is that it is not a debate we should carry at the European level; it is a debate we should carry at the international level, as we did on the minimum tax and as France managed to carry it. That is why with President Lula we built in the G20 this alliance for the taxation of very high incomes, and it is in the G20 at the OECD level that we must carry this fight. Existentially, this European humanism, this certain idea of Europe that George Steiner spoke of, is made of very tangible things: this idea of freedom, the rule of law, this will to preserve knowledge, culture, this relationship to equality I mentioned. But it is in effect this Europe of cafes, our capitals that are both the same and different, and this permanent tension we have between the heritage to transmit and modernity that shakes us. And that is why our Europe is constantly caught in this tension. But it has its say to say. It has its say to say by continuing to defend our culture, its transmission as I evoked, defending precisely the singularity of it, the dialogue between its universities, these convivial places, these cafes, but also being this patch of earth that decides to protect its landscapes. And I believe that the ambition we must have and have started to have for our forests, our seas, and our oceans must be thought of as such. It is not a form of disembodied modernist whim that would want to put ecology at everything, because sometimes I hear the caricature. No, protecting our forests, protecting our biodiversity, protecting our seas and our oceans is simply measuring, we European humanists, that we know how to count to three: the generation before, the one after, and ours. And that our Europe is a treasure we have received as heritage and that we will transmit. And everything I have just said cannot be done by destroying natural resources that are not replaceable. And that is why the ambition for biodiversity, the ambition for the protection of forests, our oceans, and everything we will have to develop in the policies to be carried out for our Europe is an ambition that is above all humanist. I say it also because I am not among those who think that nature has rights superior to man. And it is a European humanism that, in my eyes, assumes protecting nature because it is part of our balances and what has been transmitted to us, but doing it as humanists for us and our children. Ladies and gentlemen, I have been too long; I am aware of it. But there would be so many more things to say. And I know very well that at the end of this speech, some will reproach me for not having spoken enough about the African continent, our neighborhood, treaty reform, modernization, and everything I did not say. Europe is a conversation that never ends. And it is a project moreover that has no limit from a philosophical, civilizational point of view. It is true. Let us never forget that the rape of Europa takes place on land that Asia claims by a Greek god. There is a form of ambiguity, and that is why it does not end here, even at the Sorbonne. Ernest Renan asked what a nation was, and the time has come for Europe to ask what it intends to become. In my eyes, speaking of Europe is always speaking of France, but you have understood that we are living a decisive moment. Our Europe can die, I told you, and it can die from a form of ruse of history. It is that it has done an enormous amount of things in recent decades; it is that, in a way, European ideas have won the Gramscian fight; it is that all nationalisms in Europe no longer dare to say they will leave the euro and Europe. But they have all adopted a discourse that is the same: 'I pocket everything Europe has done, but I will do it simpler, but I will not respect the rules, but I will basically do it by flouting its foundations.' Basically, they no longer propose to leave the building or demolish it; they propose just to no longer have co-ownership rules, no longer invest, no longer pay the rent, and they say it will work. And the risk is that all the others are becoming timid, saying: 'The nationalists, the anti-Europeans are very strong everywhere in our countries.' It is normal, there is fear, there is anger in the moments of shock we are living through, precisely because our compatriots everywhere in Europe feel that we can die or disappear. The answer is not in timidity; it is in audacity. The answer is not in saying 'they are rising everywhere' and then thinking we have a choice: this year, the British will choose their future, the Americans will choose their future, on June 9, Europeans will too. But the choice is not to do as we have always done; it is not just to adjust; it is to assume to carry new paradigms. So I know, after Voltaire, it is difficult to be optimistic; it may even be for some a question of credibility. I am, but it is a form of optimism of the will. Yes, I believe that we can take back control of our lives, of our destiny, through the power, prosperity, and humanism of our Europe. And basically, at a time when times are uncertain, to paraphrase without citing it well what Hannah Arendt said in 'The Human Condition': 'The best way to know the future, when events return, when the unforeseen is there, the best way to know the future is to make promises that we keep.' Well, what I propose to you, strong in our lucidity, is to make ourselves these few great promises for the Europe of the coming decade and to fight ardently to keep them. Then we may have a chance to know the future. In any case, we will have fought to choose ours. Long live Europe, long live the Republic, and long live France.