Emmanuel Macron insisted yesterday that Europe must "reinforce" its identity and sovereignty, to the point of defending protectionist policies in key areas, such as infrastructure and cybersecurity. The French president delivered a speech at the Nexus Institute in The Hague on the first day of his state visit to the Netherlands.
Macron's intervention was interrupted for two minutes, at the beginning, by the protest of several young people in the public, a quite unusual fact before a foreign guest of this rank. The protesters reproached him for the pension reform and his alleged inaction in the face of the climate emergency.
"The president of violence and hypocrisy," read a banner, in English. “I think we have lost something: where is French democracy”, said one of the young people. "You ignored Parliament, when are you going to listen to millions of people on the street?" said another, before the security service removed the disturbers from the act with expeditious means.
As is his custom, the French head of state, who loves dialectic, tried to explain himself to his critics, calmly, and told them that France is a democracy and that it would be in danger if the decisions taken by the representatives of the people their legitimacy was questioned by those who disagreed. He then defended the pension reform as "essential" and recalled that the retirement age in other European countries is higher than 64, the threshold set by the new law.
Once the incident was over, Macron continued with his arguments in favor of European sovereignty, which, according to him, has become even more urgent due to the double crisis of the covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
The speech before the Nexus Institute came to complete what Macron said over the weekend, upon his return from China, in a controversial interview with the economic newspaper Les Echos. In those statements, the French president warned that European states should not be "vassals", but become "a third pole" between the United States and China. Macron distanced himself from “the logic of blocks” and spoke out against “the extraterritoriality of the dollar”; that is, against the hegemonic role of the US currency in the global economy. That clear distancing of Macron from the North American ally created irritation on the other side of the Atlantic and among other European countries much more in favor of the link with Washington.
In The Hague, Macron championed a European-wide green industrial policy to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. "It is necessary to protect our interests," he said, adding: "If we consider that they may be compromised, then we must act." According to Macron, it is necessary to "filter investments in certain essential sectors" and where there may be vulnerabilities or where European security is in danger.
It had been 23 years since a French president had made a state trip to the Netherlands. It is the return of the visit made by King William and Queen Máxima in 2016. Yesterday there was a gala dinner in Amsterdam. Today the day is dedicated to political meetings, with Prime Minister Mark Rutte and between the respective governments, and technological cooperation between the two countries. The sovereigns of the Netherlands will accompany Macron and his wife Brigitte this Wednesday to see an exhibition on the painter Johannes Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Dutch cultural event this spring.
