The war in Ukraine has both demonstrated and heightened the dependence of European countries on US military support, while also creating divisions in their defence strategies, notably between Germany and France. In this interview with Justine Brabant, retired French army lieutenant general Jean-Paul Perruche, who served at a senior level in NATO and as director general of the European Union military staff, offers his analysis of the challenges now facing Europe. He argues why it must build a structure to allow for common military autonomy with pragmatic plans to deal with future threats. “It’s really quite pitiful that we are incapable of doing anything, whereas we have four times the budget of the Russians,” he says. “It’s tragic.”
France’s aim is "to move towards a Europe that is powerful in the world, fully sovereign, free in its choices and in charge of its own destiny", Macron said.
The French donation of an initial 100,000 doses of AstraZeneca's COVID vaccine this month, announced on Wednesday, is a boost for the international COVAX scheme.
French president said the EU had been late in ramping up vaccine production and jabs, but was catching up and would become the world’s biggest producer of vaccines this summer.
The French government has announced it will not sign “as it stands” a proposed free trade deal between the European Union (EU) and the Mercosur economic bloc of South American countries Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, citing environmental concerns and notably the deforestation of swathes of the Amazon region for cattle farms. But while EU member countries appear increasingly divided over the terms of the trade agreement, French economist Mathilde Dupré, co-founder of the Paris-based Veblen Institute think tank on economic issues surrounding ecological transition, tells Mediapart why what she calls a “climaticidal” deal may yet go ahead.
Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel also discussed growing tensions in the eastern Mediterranean and the coup in Mali, during talks at the French president's retreat in the south of France.
Lebanon, anti-government protests in Belarus, the COVID-19 crisis, Mali’s coup d’état, and tensions between Greece and Turkey will also be discussed, according to a French official.
Trade officials working for the European Commission may be having to work from home because of the coronavirus pandemic but they are still busy negotiating free trade deals with countries around the world on behalf of the European Union. As Mediapart's Brussels correspondent Ludovic Lamant reports, these officials are behaving as if the Covid-19 outbreak has not had a dramatic effect on everything – including the way people regard world trade and globalisation.
The French Mediterranean island of Corsica is the focus of a series of investigations into the suspected mass fraud of European Union agricultural subsidies. One of the alleged methods of the fraud is the fictitious declaration of swathes of scrubland as pasture land for cattle farmers. The sums involved are vast, and those suspected of the scam include some closely related to the island’s notorious and feared underworld gangs. Hélène Constanty reports.
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