French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday, January 8th, that the United States was “breaking free from international rules” and “gradually turning away” from some of its allies, AFP reports.
Macron, who wants to divert attention away from his domestic political problems by making bold foreign policy statements, delivered his annual speech to French ambassadors at the Élysée Palace.
European powers are scrambling to come up with a coordinated response to U.S. assertive foreign policy in the Western hemisphere following Washington’s capture of Venezuela’s leader Nicolás Maduro and Donald Trump’s designs on Greenland.
“The United States is an established power, but one that is gradually turning away from some of its allies and breaking free from international rules that it was still promoting recently,” Macron told ambassadors.
“Multilateral institutions are functioning less and less effectively,” Macron added. “We are living in a world of great powers with a real temptation to divide up the world.”
Macron said Europe must protect its interests.
The French president’s speech came on a day when farmers were protesting in Paris against the signing of the Mercosur agreement, and as his country is still without a 2026 budget, with the government possibly set to push the state budget through without a parliamentary vote.
It is not surprising that yesterday Donald Trump said he doubted his European allies in NATO would “be there for us if we really needed them.”
