PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday a standoff with the United States over Greenland was \u201ca strategic wake-up call for all of Europe,\u201d speaking alongside the leaders of Denmark and the Danish autonomous territory.<\/p>\n
European powers have sought to join forces to show they can stand on their own feet after US President Donald Trump has roiled the transatlantic alliance by threatening to seize Greenland.<\/p>\n
Speaking alongside the prime ministers of Denmark and Greenland, Mette Frederiksen and Jens-Frederik Nielsen, Macron said the \u201cawakening\u201d must focus \u201con asserting our European sovereignty, on our contribution to Arctic security, on the fight against foreign interference and disinformation, and on the fight against global warming.\u201d<\/p>\n
He reaffirmed to Frederiksen and Nielsen France\u2019s solidarity and \u201cits commitment to your sovereignty and territorial integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFrance will continue to defend these principles in accordance with the United Nations Charter,\u201d he added, expressing his support for increased NATO engagement in the Arctic.<\/p>\n
Macron said some words in the Indigenous Greenlandic language, and then switching to the Danish language told the premier France would \u201cbe side-by-side\u201d with the \u201cKingdom of Denmark.\u201d<\/p>\n
After European pushback, Trump backed down on the threat to take Greenland by military force.<\/p>\n
Speaking in Paris earlier Wednesday, Frederiksen said that Europe needed to improve its defenses \u201cnow\u201d to become less reliant on the United States for military protection.<\/p>\n
On Monday, NATO chief Mark Rutte told EU lawmakers to \u201ckeep on dreaming\u201d if they thought Europe could defend itself without the US.<\/p>\n
In response to Rutte\u2019s comments, Frederiksen conceded it would be \u201cextremely difficult\u201d for Europe to defend itself right now.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause when you look at intelligence, nuclear weapons, and so on, we depend on the US,\u201d she said at Sciences Po university.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I think we\u2019re able to do more than what is being said publicly right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for a 2035 target to ramp up spending on NATO, she said: \u201cI\u2019m sorry to say it would be too late.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think rearming ourselves now is the most important thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
NATO members committed to raising defense and security spending last year to five percent of their economic output, following on from an earlier target of two percent by 2024, after pressure from the US government.<\/p>\n
Fredriksen said Europe had made a \u201cbig mistake\u201d by cutting military budgets in the past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday a standoff with the United States over Greenland was \u201ca strategic wake-up call for all of Europe,\u201d speaking alongside the leaders of Denmark and the Danish autonomous territory. European powers have sought to join forces to show they can stand on their own feet after US President Donald …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":92934,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92921"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92935,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92921\/revisions\/92935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}