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Emmanuel Macron on how to rescue Europe
The French president on grave risks to the continent, and what to do about them
Seven years ago, when Emmanuel Macron was first elected president of France, it was with a campaign infused with optimism about Europe. The leader who sat down with The Economist on April 29th is an altogether graver figure. He has lost none of his combative energy. But his analysis of the threats encircling Europe is resolutely bleak. At stake is the survival of Europe as a safe place, a guarantor of prosperity and the liberal democratic order. “A civilisation can die,” Mr Macron warns, and the end can be “brutal”. “Things can happen much more quickly than we think.”
Mr Macron is speaking just days after giving a speech at the Sorbonne in which he first said that “our Europe can die”. In our interview, conducted in the first-floor salon doré of the Elysée Palace, the French windows thrown open to the broad lawns below, the president stresses far more starkly the urgency and gravity of the moment. His worry concerns not just the European Union, or even the defence of European territory. It is about the durability of a set of rules and values, underpinned by economic wealth and physical security, which bind all Europeans.
Emmanuel Macron in his own words (English)
The French president’s interview with The Economist
Emmanuel Macron’s urgent message for Europe
The French president issues a dark and prophetic warning
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In 1940, after France had been defeated by the Nazi blitzkrieg, the historian Marc Bloch condemned his country’s inter-war elites for having failed to face up to the threat that lay ahead. Today Emmanuel Macron cites Bloch as a warning that Europe’s elites are gripped by the same fatal complacency.
France’s president set out his apocalyptic vision in an interview with The Economist in the Elysée Palace. It came days after his delivery of a big speech about the future of Europe—an unruly, two-hour, Castro-scale marathon, ranging from nuclear annihilation to an alliance of European libraries. Mr Macron’s critics called it a mix of electioneering, the usual French self-interest and the intellectual vanity of a Jupiterian president thinking about his legacy.
Editor’s note: The interview was conducted at the Elysée Palace in Paris on April 29th. The French transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. This English translation was done by The Economist
The Economist: In your speech at the Sorbonne, you said that “Europe can die”. What does that actually mean? What is at stake?
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