🇫🇷Europe lines up alongside Ukraine
The week in review, Macron is welcomed as ‘EU leader’ in Portugal, Keir Starmer Hosts Macron and other leaders at summit to reinforce Ukraine support, and S&P issues negative outlook for France
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This week
📅Week in review
🇵🇹Macron welcomed as ‘EU leader’ in Portugal
🇬🇧Starmer and Macron at summit to reinforce Ukraine support
💰S&P issues negative outlook for France
📅Week in review
Right ladies and gentlemen, a few key reads for you guys to kick this off!
As you know, this week saw a catastrophic geopolitical earthquake take place in Washington DC, where Donald Trump and JD Vance both turned a boilerplate, if unfair, diplomatic deal into an attempt to humiliate the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for nothing but their own hubristic ego-stroking.
You can read this here:
We also saw a great piece by friend of the publication,
, who wrote a quick piece on the EU’s support, or lack thereof, for the ongoing Serbian protests, which you can read about here:
On top of this, I spoke to CNN Portugal this week about Emmanuel Macron’s visit to the White House, discussing whether Donald Trump can be trusted on anything he says, and whether he even believes what he says himself, and whether he wasn’t happy to be corrected by Emmanuel Macron as he was during the meeting.
And finally, I spoke to the lovely Gerardo Fortuna over at Euronews, discussing how Emmanuel Macron uses social media to great effect.
Let me know what you guys think!
🇵🇹Macron welcomed as ‘EU leader’ in Portugal
Let’s try to start the week off on a high (and jesus christ, what a week) and look at some of the positive events of the week: like Emmanuel Macron visiting Lisbon and Porto on Thursday and Friday with a message of European unity.
With the two-day state visit having been planned long in advance, intended to boost bilateral ties between the two EU member states, much of the agenda was clearly dictated by the weeks of chaos cause by Donald Trump’s far-right wing America.
The visit took place across several sites, including a former military warehouse that had been transformed into a start-up incubator that is becoming a centre of innovation in Portugal. It was here that Macron called on Europeans to “[rediscover] the taste for risk, ambition and power”
“I see a lot of people in our Europe saying 'we're going to have to be nice to the Americans, it's going to pass, we have to bow down,' [but] the answer is not in submission … I am not in favour of happy vassalisation”
- Emmanuel Macron on Thursday 27 February
Portuguese leaders broadly seemed to agree with President Macron, with current mayor of Lisbon and former European Commissioner for Innovation, Research and Science (2014-2019), Carlos Moedas, praising the French President for his action.
“We were very reassured to see you in the United States, the way you have been with President Trump, it is very important for Europe,”
This made it easier for Portugal and France to respond with one voice once Donald Trump had made renewed threats of 25% tariffs on European products, stating that if this was done, “the Europeans will respond and therefore there will be reciprocal tariffs”.
This visit was, therefore, a success, with France and Portugal also signing an agreement to increase defence cooperation and equipment purchasing. A letter of intent was signed, with Portugal committing to acquiring 12 CAESAR self-propelled howitzer units by 2027 and up to 36 by 2034.
These howitzers have seen use, most recently, in the Ukrainian army, and have been used to great success by the soldiers defending against the Russian invasion.
And this has bolstered the reputation of the French weapons system, as well as shown that European industries can produce world class weaponry that can compete with the American and Chinese systems.
It’s for this reason, amongst all the others, that Macron renewed his calls for European strategic autonomy to be aggressively pursued:
“We need to have a Europe that invests more in its defence and security … for this, we need a Europe that spends more, but that spends more in Europe, that is to say that produces more defence solutions, capabilities on European soil”
And this will be the name of the game for the next few years, with European leaders being pushed to produce more in Europe, and as mentioned by yours truly in a piece yesterday on the fallout from the catastrophic Zelenskyy meeting in The White House, moving away from American systems.
The visit ended on a highly symbolic note, with Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro handing over the keys to the city of Porto to President Macron with a comment that is reverberating once again throughout the continent:
“You have established yourself as the main leader of the European Union in the response to the emergence of a new world order, which poses major challenges to the 27 Member States,”
- Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro on Friday 28 February
And the road trip has continued this weekend, with Emmanuel Macron making an important trip to the United Kingdom…
🇬🇧Starmer and Macron at summit to reinforce Ukraine support
President Macron was in the United Kingdom today for an important Lancaster House summit that will take place later today.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has invited Western leaders to continue discussions from the Paris Summits hosted by Emmanuel Macron, and work on a reaction to the out-of-control behaviour from Donald Trump and continue to concretise European independence and support for Ukraine.
This meeting will bring together:
🇬🇧 Prime Minister Keir Starmer
🇺🇦 President Volodymyr Zelenskyy
🇫🇷 President Emmanuel Macron
🇩🇪 Chancellor Olaf Scholz
🇮🇹 Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni
🇨🇦 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
🇪🇸 Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez
🇵🇱 Prime Minister Donald Tusk
🇩🇰 Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen
🇳🇴 Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre
🇫🇮 President Alexander Stubb
🇸🇪 Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson
🇳🇱 Prime Minister Dick Schoof
🇨🇿 Prime Minister Petr Fiala
🇷🇴 President Ilie Bolojan
🇹🇷 Minister of Foreign Affairs Hakan Fidan
🇪🇺 Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen
🇪🇺 Council President António Costa
NATO Sec Gen Mark Rutte
The first major announcement from this summit is that the UK and France will work together with Ukraine, and “possibly one or two others”, to produce a concrete plan that will stop the war without throwing Kyiv under a Russian bus..
“We have to find a way that we can all work together. Because, in the end, we’ve had three years of bloody conflict. Now we need to get to that lasting peace,” Keir Starmer said on the BBC today, which along with previous statements and planning, give a hint at what can be expected from the European powers.
“The United Kingdom, along with France and possibly one or two others, will work with Ukraine on a plan to stop the fighting, and then we’ll discuss that plan with the United States.”
However, one key thing to bear in mind is that European leaders are signalling that we must continue working with the United States in the short-term, with Donald Tusk highlighting that Europe needs to maintain “the closest possible alliance.”
This was accompanied by a strong statement in favour of European strategic autonomy:
“A Europe that understands its global potential, its status as a superpower, will not be an alternative to the US, but the most wanted ally. In the end, that’s what Trump wants, for Europe to take much greater responsibility for its security … It’s a paradox, someone rightly pointed this out, that 500 million Europeans are asking 300 million Americans to defend them from 140 millions Russians,”
- Donald Tusk speaking this morning before departing for London
Great minds think alike.
All of this is coming at a time where Russia is rubbing it’s hands at the change in American foreign policy, with the Kremlin having stated that Russia and the United States were now in alignment.
“The new (US) administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations. This largely coincides with our vision”
Which should give our leaders a lot of food for thought, and just goes to show that Europe stands by Ukraine alone, and must aggressively pursue a strategy of Strategic Autonomy that increases our power, our safety, and our ability to protect our friends.
But more on this later…
💰S&P issues negative outlook for France
To cap off the week, Standards and Poor’s has maintained France’s AA- credit rating, but has signalled that it could downgrade the French rating with a negative outlook.
Having held a AAA rating up until January 2012, with the effects of the then-ongoing financial crises, and France has continued to attempt to regain this rating in the time since.
Having escaped a further drop to the A category, S&P has warned France based on a “weak political consensus to tackle France's large current account deficits amid more uncertain economic growth prospects”, the result of the recent spates of political uncertainty and chaos.
It has particularly highlighted that a further rating drop will likely take place “if the government fails to further reduce its large budget deficit in the next two years or if economic growth falls below our forecasts for an extended period.”
The French Ministry of Economy and Finance has “taken note” of the statement.
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