Benjamin Haddad (Renaissance) is the Minister for European Affairs in the government of Michel Barnier. He draws the consequences for Europe of Donald Trump's return to the White House.
How do you react to the election of Donald Trump?
The United States is our ally. We respect the sovereign and democratic choice of the American people. We will work with President Trump, as President Macron did during his first term. They also had a substantial exchange on Ukraine and the Middle East the day after the election.
The real question is with us. This must be the time for the strategic awakening of
Europeans, to no longer be dependent, every four years, on political upheavals across the Atlantic. This is the best way to take control of our destiny, but also to reinvent the transatlantic relationship. If we want to have influence, we must invest collectively in our sovereignty on an economic and military level, and no longer subcontract our security to others. The summit of the European Political Community, this Thursday in Budapest, is an opportunity to exchange views with our European partners.
What meaning can this have in terms of the security of the continent?
This means firstly, continuing to increase our military budgets and supporting an autonomous European defense industry. We doubled our spending in France during the two terms of office of the President of the Republic. We already have the tools, but we must also go further in European cooperation. We must be bold to find new resources, as recommended for example by the former Estonian Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas, when she proposed a large European loan of 100 billion euros.
Beyond the military level, let us reduce our dependencies on the industrial level,
technological, energetic. We have been saying this since the Sorbonne speech. The alarm signal was sounded again by the Draghi report on the continent's industrial decline due to the fall in our productivity. For thirty years, the United States has created twice as much GDP as Europe. This gap is particularly visible in strategic sectors for our sovereignty such as artificial intelligence, where the United States captures 60% of global investments, China 17%, and Europe only 6%. Unification of capital markets, support for disruptive innovations, reforms of competition rules, mobilization of public and private investment… And let's look at what works in the United States where we innovate, we encourage entrepreneurs, before rushing to regulate new technologies…
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