(Corrects to Merz in last paragraph)
By John Irish and Sudip Kar-Gupta
MUNICH, Feb 13 (Reuters) – Europe must turn its focus to long-term strategic thinking, including creating deep-strike capabilities and assessing how France’s nuclear deterrent can fit into the bloc’s future security architecture, France’s president said on Friday.
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, President Emmanuel Macron dismissed accusations that Europe was decaying and defended its push to tackle disinformation and the excesses of social media that were harming Western democracies.
“This is the right time for audacity. This is the right time for a strong Europe,” Macron said. “Europe has to learn to become a geopolitical power. It was not part of our DNA.”
Macron, who is set to enter his final year in office, said Europe would still face an aggressive Russia even if there were a deal on the Ukraine war and that it could not cave into Russian demands or allow a short-term accord that would not resolve core issues.
“The Europeans must start this work with their own thinking and their own interests. So my proposal today is to launch a series of consultations on this important issue, which we have started to flesh out with our British and German colleagues, but in the broader European consultation with all the colleagues here, with a lot of capacities, a lot of strategic thinking,” Macron said.
Macron, who is scheduled to deliver a speech later this month on how he sees the role of France’s nuclear deterrent within Europe, said he had started those consultations.
“We have to reshuffle and reorganise our architecture of security in Europe. Because the past architecture of security was totally designed and framed during Cold War times. So it’s no longer adapted,” he said.
“We have to rearticulate nuclear deterrence in this approach. And this is why we are conceiving, and in a few weeks’ time I will detail that, but we engaged a strategic dialogue, obviously with Chancellor Merz, but with a few European leaders, in order to see how we can articulate our national doctrine, which is guaranteed and controlled by the Constitution,” he said.
(Reporting by John Irish;Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Jonathan Oatis)
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