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French President Emmanuel Macron has warned that the “threats” and “intimidation” by the United States are not over, despite an apparent subsidence in tensions, and urged the EU to treat recent disruptions in transatlantic relations as a wake-up call to push ahead with reforms.
In an interview with several publications on Tuesday, Macron said European countries needed to learn from what he called the “Greenland moment” and called on European Union leaders to pursue changes that would strengthen their ability to compete economically with the United States and China.
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US President Donald Trump has vowed to take control of Greenland, saying the autonomous Danish region is vital to “national security.”
Macron said the recent pause in US threats against European allies should not be mistaken for a permanent change in the US position, saying the Trump administration was “openly anti-European” and called for the “dismantling” of the EU.
“We are now in what I would call a ‘Greenland moment,'” President Macron said in an interview published in France’s Le Monde, the English-language newspapers The Economist and Financial Times, and Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung.
“There were threats and threats, and then all of a sudden Washington backed off. And we think it’s over. But don’t believe it for a second.”
“Where there are blatant acts of aggression, there must be no capitulation or attempts at reconciliation,” he said.
“We have been trying this strategy for months without success. But above all, it strategically leads us to become more dependent on Europe.”
Macron added that the US threat to Europe was “every day” and warned that if the EU used the Digital Services Act to regulate US tech giants, further hostile moves against the EU would come in the form of US import tariffs.
“The United States will attack us over digital regulation in the coming months – that’s for sure,” Macron said.
“It’s a deep shock.”
Ahead of this week’s EU conference on competitiveness, President Macron called for the “simplification” and “deepening” of the EU’s single market and the “diversification” of trade partnerships. He warned that the bloc needed to become more resilient in the face of challenges from the United States and China.
“On the trade front, there is a tsunami from China, and the US side is also becoming increasingly unstable,” he said. “These two crises represent a profound shock for Europeans: a rupture.”
President Macron said he believed that the economic strategy to ensure Europe’s strength “lies in what I call protection, but it is not protectionism, but rather European priorities.”
He said the EU needs about 1.2 trillion euros ($1.4 trillion) a year in public and private investment, including in green and digital technologies, defense and security.
The French president, whose second term ends in early 2027, renewed his call for the EU to embark on more common borrowing so the 27-nation bloc can invest heavily and challenge the hegemony of the US dollar.
France has championed the concept for years, but other countries have yet to buy in.
“Now is the time to launch a future-oriented Eurobond, a common borrowing capacity for these future expenditures,” President Macron said.
President Trump upends transatlantic relations
Since returning to the White House, President Trump has destabilized Washington’s long-standing relationship with its European allies by taking a more transactional and confrontational approach to relations.
The move posed a crisis in transatlantic relations and prompted European leaders to reevaluate traditional cooperation frameworks.
Relations plummeted to a new low last month when President Trump annexed Greenland and threatened to impose trade tariffs on European countries that opposed it, before making an abrupt U-turn.
President Trump backtracked on his threat, saying he had signed a “framework” agreement with NATO chief Mark Rutte to ensure greater U.S. influence over the Arctic islands. NATO began planning a new Arctic mission amidst the conflict.
President Trump’s repeated statements about NATO’s spending targets and security efforts are also causing anxiety in Europe.
President Trump recently insulted NATO allies by commenting that they remained “some distance from the front lines” in Afghanistan, which British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called “insulting and frankly appalling”.
Meanwhile, tariffs on European imports to the United States are causing economic tensions, and the United States is pushing back against efforts to regulate the digital space through the EU’s Digital Services Act, which the U.S. government says stifles free speech and is harmful to American tech companies.
On Monday, State Department officials said the Trump administration would fund efforts to promote free speech in Western countries allied with the United States.
