PARIS—French President Emmanuel Macron warned that Europe’s decadeslong project of peaceful cooperation might perish if the continent doesn’t shore up critical gaps in its architecture, from its economic underpinnings to its approach to defense and immigration.
Macron delivered the comments in what was billed as a sequel to the landmark address he gave at the Sorbonne University in Paris at the start of his first term. Seven years later—following a pandemic and the outbreak of wars in Ukraine and Gaza—Macron returned to the Sorbonne on Thursday with a foreboding message that cast Europe as a continent at a tipping point, buffeted by great-power rivalries between the U.S., China and Russia.
“We have to be lucid about the fact that our Europe today is mortal—it can die—and it depends only on the choices we make,” Macron said. “But these choices must be made now because it is today that the question of peace and war is being played out on our continent.”
Anxieties are running high in Europe over the fraying of trans-Atlantic ties that have underpinned global security and trade since the end of World War II. This week Congress passed a $95.3 billion foreign-aid package, sending much-needed weapons to Ukraine’s beleaguered forces and fortifying Israel’s missile-defense systems. But that came after a wrenching debate over Ukraine that sharply split the Republican Party, with many members drifting toward Donald Trump’s “America First” isolationism.
Macron views Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an existential threat to the continent, warning that if Kyiv falls, other capitals could be next.
On Thursday, he called on the EU to issue common debt to fund military investment—a concept opposed by Germany and several other Northern European countries—just as the continent tapped debt markets to fund its response to the Covid pandemic.
“We are not armed to cope with the risks we face,” Macron said.
The French leader’s push for European autonomy has landed him in hot water with allies before. In February he clashed with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz over the Frenchman’s refusal to rule out sending troops from NATO countries to Ukraine—part of what Macron regards as a stance of “strategic ambiguity” that leaves all military options on the table and keeps Moscow guessing.
On Thursday, Macron said Europe should strengthen its role in NATO. Many countries in the alliance still don’t meet its threshold of spending 2% of GDP on their militaries. Europe, he said, also needed to take more initiative in defining a strategy for its collective defense.
“We must build a Europe capable of showing that it is never the vassal of the United States of America, and that it also knows how to speak to all regions of the world.”
Scholz responded to Macron’s address with a post on X, saying: “France and Germany both want for Europe to remain strong. Your speech contains good ideas to achieve this.”
Write to Noemie Bisserbe at noemie.bisserbe@wsj.com and Stacy Meichtry at Stacy.Meichtry@wsj.com