French president Emmanuel Macron is multiplying initiatives and speeches supporting Ukraine, but besides supporting the improvement of European defence. In fresh times French and British diplomacy has removed Poland from the shadows.
The French head of state is very active internationally. However, commentators admit that Macron has always been pro-European and respective months after his election in 2017, in a loud speech on the Sorbonne he called for the improvement of a "Europe of Defence". "In terms of defence, our goal must be to be able to act autonomously in Europe, in addition to NATO," he said. In 2019, Macron spoke another celebrated (and controversial) words about NATO's "brain death".
When it turned out that America might not invitation Europeans to a table where peace will be negotiated in Ukraine, and the vice president of the United States noted that Russia is not a threat to Europe, Macron called an informal summit in Paris involving respective countries, including the United Kingdom. Even any French commentators stated that the selection of the participants of this gathering was incomprehensible, due to the fact that the Baltic and Swedish countries, for example, were not invited, which had already declared their readiness to send troops to Ukraine (French and British declared their readiness to send up to 30,000 soldiers – they would defend Ukrainian institutions after the end of the war). On 19 February, another summit was held in Paris, mostly online, with the participation of another group of states (including Canada).
It is regrettable that these meetings were not held in Warsaw, but most likely Poland, holding the EU Council Presidency, could not invitation representatives of pro-Russian Hungary and Slovakia to them. Let us add that for any French journalists it is incomprehensible why Poland, so active so far, does not want to send troops to Ukraine, which is simply a failure of Polish diplomacy in this matter.
On February 24, precisely on the 3rd anniversary of the outbreak of the full-scale war in Ukraine, Macron met Donald Trump (an interesting French commentators stressed that he was Trump's first European leader, not noticing Trump's 10-minute conversation with Andrzej Duda). The speech of the bodies of the 2 leaders indicated that each of them wanted to dominate this gathering (hits on the knees, arms and backs there was no end due to the fact that everyone wanted it to be on top). Although Macron managed to insert a fewer words of fact (e.g. that European aid to Ukraine is 60% of the full aid), in retrospect the visit did not do anything. Shortly thereafter, Trump announced that he would place a 25% work on goods from the EU (he had not yet moved on to action). As for Ukraine and the peace process, after this visit the substance took an even worse turn, even though Macro seemed to agree that Trump agreed to give Ukraine an American safety guarantee.
On 2 March, Macron presented in the paper "Le Figaro" a French-British plan to suspend weapons in Ukraine at sea, in the air and in the field of energy infrastructure, which could be a test of Russia's peaceful attitude. Only the British rapidly explained that this is 1 of the options on the table.
On February 28, evening (on the day Donald Trump accepted and then asked out of the White home president Volodymyr Zelenski) French president Emmanuel Macron announced that he was ready to start talks about extending the French atomic umbrella to Europe. Earlier, the future German Chancellor Friedrich Merz spoke, who stated that a discussion was needed with the British and French about joint atomic safety.
So far, NATO members have utilized an American umbrella, but in the face of a extremist change in American abroad policy, European leaders are increasingly aware that they must trust primarily on each other. Let us remind that the United Kingdom and France are the only countries in Europe (except Russia) with atomic weapons. But, as the French point out, while the British are not entirely autonomous from the US (e.g. Americans are the ones who service their weapons), France is completely independent in the field of atomic weapons.
French commentators emphasise that the inclusion of another European countries in the atomic deterrence of France does not mean that another nations will co-decide erstwhile the red button needs to be pressed. This decision will proceed to belong solely to the president of France. Secondly, France will not nuclearly defend another countries, but will proceed (according to its war doctrine) to usage atomic weapons in defence of France's "living interests". The French must so decide whether these "living interests" scope only to Berlin or besides include, for example, the Baltic countries and Poland.
So for the time being, the only thing that remains for Poles is to watch “Parasolek from Cherbourg”, a 1964 musical melodrama directed by Jacques Demy with excellent music by Michel Legrand. In the movie there is besides a war communicative – the war in Algeria.
Joanna Różycka-Thiriet
Schuman Foundation
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