Raise debt for green jobs to give hope to unhappy middle class, says Macron
'All we’ll have is consumers and no industry,' the French President warned.
French President Emmanuel Macron said Europe risks becoming an economy with no industry and unhappy voters if it is the only continent that adheres to decarbonising.
Macron called for the EU to raise more foreign debt through Eurobonds to fund investment in new economic sectors.
These included artificial intelligence, quantum computing, semiconductors and green technology including nuclear, as well as defence equipment for Ukraine.
He said regulating without investing was not a good business model and that European nations needed to create more ‘good jobs’ at home for political stability and give the middle class ‘hope.’
‘We are the only continent that has accepted carbon neutrality and has drawn up the rules to achieve that but we cannot be the only ones to regulate but also the ones who invest less,' he told the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Macron said the United States was not compliant with World Trade Organisation rules and was over-investing in its green tech through the Inflation Reduction Act.
‘And the Chinese are doing the same thing,’ he said.
‘If we are not careful … we will be the only ones who comply with the rules and all we’ll have is consumers and no industry.
‘We must invest much more in green tech.’
Europe, which heads to the polls in the middle of the year, is experiencing a rise in voter support for far-right movements, fuelled in part, by opposition to migration, climate measures and threats to farmer protections.
Last week, Macron reshuffled his government to elevate figures with more right-wing views.
‘Why are all of Europe’s democracies running into crisis? Because the middle class is unhappy with what we’re doing, we have to change our model in that revolution.’
Macron said better-paid jobs would allow voters to embrace the green transition.
Macron’s ambitious 2030 plan supports greater renewables, local electric-vehicle production and crucially a massive expansion of nuclear plants including the next-generation small modular reactors (SMRs).
SMRs have been ridiculed as an option for Australia by the country’s Environment minister Chris Bowen as a ‘pipe dream wrapped in a fantasy, accompanied by an illusion.’ France will close its two remaining coal plants by 2027, Macron said, as a result of the investment in nuclear.
Russia must not win
Macron, who advocates strategic autonomy for Europe, said this applied to both ‘derisking’ from China as well as reducing dependence on the United States.
Europe fears that Donald Trump, who blitzed his Republican opponents in the Iowa primary this week, could end American support for Ukraine and reduce support for the Trans-Atlantic alliance, including potentially even withdrawing the United States from NATO if he is re-elected in November.
Macron did not mention Donald Trump by name but said that 2024 would be a key year for Europe’s sovereignty ‘whatever the outcome of US elections.’
The centrist leader pointed to the two hot wars raging in the Middle East and Eastern Europe and said that Russia must not be allowed to win.
Next month, France will follow in Britain’s footsteps in signing a bilateral security pact with Ukraine. This, Macron said, was in tandem with Ukraine’s hopes to join NATO.
NATO’s member states have said Ukraine cannot be admitted while the country is at war with Russia, perversely providing President Vladimir Putin with an incentive to keep fighting.
While France is likely to send Ukraine more sophisticated weapons, Germany’s Bundestag, led by the governing left-wing parties, voted against a Conservative motion calling for the transfer of long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine.
Macron also pointed to the attacks by the Houthis in Yemen on commercial shipping but did not explain why France did not participate in the US-led strikes against the Houthis infrastructure last week.
Only the UK joined the US in bombing Yemeni targets despite the Houthis targeting Western commercial shipping companies.
The Elysée also boycotted joining in on a subsequent statement of support that was signed by a wider group of nations including Britain, Germany and Australia.
But despite the bleak geopolitical environment, Macron urged the world to look on the bright side.
‘Be realistic but be optimistic, if you look at 2024, a lot of people say “oh it’s dreadful,”’ he said.
‘But I truly believe that the decisions that can change things are within our hands.’
However, making his debut on the world stage, Argentina’s new President, Javier Milei, a libertarian, was not so positive.
‘Today I’m here to tell you that the Western world is in danger,’ he said.
'And it is in danger because those who are supposed to have to defend the values of the West are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism and thereby to poverty.
He said Western leaders had abandoned freedom for collectivism.
‘Social justice is not just and it doesn’t contribute to the general wellbeing,’ he said and railed against the collection of taxes as ‘coercion.’