French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday 7 January that the EU should engage with Russia.
In June 2021 (see EUROPE 12749/10), France and Germany proposed a structured summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, something that was not warmly received by several Member States.
“Having a dialogue is not conceding, it is taking stock of our disagreements and trying to build a future”, said Macron at a press conference held with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Paris, adding that he would soon hold talks with Putin.
Macron called for a “frank, demanding, coordinated” dialogue, while acknowledging that not all EU member states share the same history or geography with Russia.
Reflecting on the European security architecture
In a broader sense, Mr Macron and Ms von der Leyen have emphasised their willingness to reflect, under the French Presidency of the EU Council, on the European security architecture. “There will only be one solution with the EU” in relation to this architecture, stressed von der Leyen, as Europeans are excluded from US–Russia talks on Ukraine and from the draft treaties on security guarantees, which Russia has sent to the US and NATO.
“The European security architecture is first and foremost a matter for Europeans and it is therefore up to us to propose the architecture that we want”, Macron said, adding that it had to be built as Europeans, shared with NATO Allies and the EU’s neighbourhood, “ because we are a geopolitical power”. According to a French government source, it is not possible to envisage that the agreements that created this European architecture are called into question without the Europeans being involved. “Any dialogue must be held with Europeans sitting at the table and not on the menu”, the source said.
As for the French President, the discussion on architecture will also have to take place with Moscow. “We need to have a dialogue with Russia, which, by virtue of its geography and history, is a key player in the European security architecture that we need to build”, he said.
With the INF treaty between the US and Russia ended in 2019, Macron – who has put the blame on Washington while NATO places it on Moscow – said that he was ready to bring the whole range of European military and arms control issues into the talks. “This is a situation we cannot afford to remain in”, he said. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)