(CN) — Amid the shock of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, French President Emmanuel Macron urged Europe to steer an independent course from the United States, speaking at a summit of European leaders and allies in Budapest on Thursday.
“This is a decisive moment in history for us Europeans,” Macron said in opening remarks to the European Political Community, an informal gathering of 47 countries.
“Do we want to read the history written by others — the wars launched by Vladimir Putin, the U.S. election, China’s technological or trade choices,” Macron asked. “Or do we want to write our own history? I think we have the strength to write it.”
The European Political Community was a forum concocted by Macron to regularly bring together European Union nations and neighbors outside the bloc — including Turkey, Ukraine, Albania, Azerbaijan, Moldova and Bosnia-Herzegovina — to discuss issues of common interest.
At this summit in Budapest, two subjects dominated: Trump and the war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attended the meeting and urged Europeans to stay the course on supplying Ukraine with weapons and aid in its war with Russia.
Zelenskyy spoke to Trump on Wednesday night and he told reporters in Budapest that Europe and the U.S. need each other to remain strong.
“It was a good, productive conversation,” Zelenskyy said.
“Of course, we cannot yet know what his specific actions will be. But we hope that America will become stronger. This is the kind of America Europe needs. And a strong Europe is what America needs. This is the bond between allies that should be valued and must not be lost,” he said.
In Europe, there are fears the U.S. president-elect will cut off support to Ukraine once he takes office and effectively force Kyiv to surrender. In his presidential campaign, Trump vowed to end the war in Ukraine by getting Kyiv and Moscow to negotiate.
For such a scenario, the worry is Ukraine may be forced to cede territory to Russia and abandon its goal to become a member of NATO.
However, many in Europe are opposed to allowing Putin to claim victory and warn the Russian leader will become emboldened by prevailing in Ukraine.
“What happens to Ukraine today happens to Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia or Poland tomorrow,” said Ben Tonra, an international relations professor at University College Dublin, in a telephone interview.
“The same language Putin uses against Ukraine, he uses against the Baltic states,” he said. “The same language he uses against Europe generally.”
In Budapest, Macron revived a much-debated theme in Europe: The need to become stronger militarily.
“We must not delegate forever our security to America,” Macron said.
He also echoed a long-held position in Paris. France was a founding member of NATO, but it has had a troubled relationship with it, particularly due to the dominant role the U.S. plays in the alliance. Since the exit of the United Kingdom, France is the EU’s only nuclear-armed power and it remains a leading military force in Europe.
Macron’s statements mirrored discussions that swirled around European capitals during Trump’s first presidency. Back then, European leaders talked about creating an EU army and becoming more independent from Washington.
In 2018, Macron called for the creation of a “true European army” in a number of speeches and then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel echoed his appeal.
At the time, Trump chided European allies for not spending enough on their militaries and questioned the validity of NATO. Trump remains skeptical about the principle of collective defense and he has even said the U.S. should not defend a NATO member that does not spend enough on its military. Under the alliance’s guidelines, a member state should spend 2% of its gross domestic product on defense. Trump is credited with pushing many allies to meet that goal.
“He was the one in NATO who stimulated us to move over the 2%. And now, also thanks to him, NATO, if you take out the numbers of the U.S., is above the 2%,” NATO chief Mark Rutte said in Budapest.
Still, much of Europe’s bold talk about creating a pan-European army and becoming less dependent on the U.S. went by the wayside once President Joe Biden took over the White House in 2020 and war in Ukraine erupted in February 2022.
Macron said Europe must face the reality that American and European interests are not the same.
“He was elected by the American people,” Macron said of Trump. “He will defend the American interests.”
It is not the role of EU leaders, he said, to “comment on the election … to wonder if it is good or not.”
“The question is whether we are willing to defend the European interest. It is the only question. It is our priority,” Macron said.
Most EU leaders agreed with Macron and the need to build up defense capacities.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said it was “time to wake up from our geopolitical naivete and to realize that we need to commit additional resources in order to be able to address major challenges. It is a (question of) competitiveness and a European defense.”
Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.