Speech of the President of the Republic to the conference of Ambassadors
MIL OSI Translation. Government of the Republic of France statements from English to French – Posted on August 27, 2018
Dear Presidents,
Prime Minister,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Ladies and Gentlemen, Ambassadors,
Ladies and gentlemen,
I am very happy to meet you today to open this Ambassadors and Ambassadors Conference. Happy because it is always the unique opportunity to share some convictions and a reading of the world as it goes, in which every day France acts, is expected, carries his voice.
In a few days, you will join your teams in the field and you will carry with exigency, determination, a great responsibility.
Your first responsibility will be to represent our country, our history, our republican ideals, our metropolis and overseas geographies, our interests. And by representing France you represent history, strength, the role of our people in the concert of nations and have to lead a diplomacy that I want reliable and innovative.
Your second responsibility, with your team, with the support of all the relays you have on site, will be to implement an ambitious policy for our country. This ambition, rest assured that it will result in a pace of reform in France that will not change pace, quite the contrary. The Prime Minister will give you directions. Several ministers will also have to speak on this point. Under the leadership of your Minister Jean-Yves Le DRIAN, whom I would like to thank for his constant involvement, you will help us to support these reforms internationally.
Indeed, you are in my opinion stakeholders in the strategy that I asked the government to implement for the country. First, by fully involving our French communities abroad. They are a wealth, a strength. Our reforms must be explained to them and they must also be brought by them. French people and French people from abroad are an asset for our country. They must participate fully in this new influence of France.
That is why I wanted an in-depth reflection on French education abroad, which, on the basis of the report I asked the government, will lead to the announcement of a reform this autumn . This is also why I want to go through the simplifications expected by our fellow citizens, in terms of administrative procedures and online voting.
Then you contribute to the competitiveness of France. You need to explain to governments, economic actors in the countries where you are, the consistency and breadth of our transformation agenda. Our attractiveness is improving, but we need to be much more involved in our exports. Your mobilization for economic diplomacy is an important part of this strategy. In particular, we need to focus our collective action on an export strategy for medium-sized companies such as small and medium-sized companies, which alone will reduce our trade deficit.
But I expect more from you. From Ouagadougou to Xi'an, from Sydney to New York or the Sorbonne, I have during the year that ends, through several speeches, renew our geographical or strategic approaches. These must now be broken down precisely. This involves choosing clear and therefore limited objectives and taking new steps to monitor them. We still tend to think that everything is a priority and not enough to have a culture of results. Even in diplomacy, success is measured – albeit not in a day and probably never in a day – with the ability nevertheless to influence attitudes, build friendships and alliances, win markets. In a word, to advance the interests of France and the French and to share a little of our vision and conception of the world.
It is the expectation of our fellow citizens, who legitimately want to see the repercussions of the policy that we lead. This supposes finally a capacity of anticipation reinforced. We follow the situations of many countries or regions, from Venezuela to Burma through Ukraine or the Democratic Republic of Congo. But we must anticipate them more, sometimes make bets, propose initiatives. I appeal to your spirit of foresight, analysis, action. Never hesitate to propose freely, it is the best way not to undergo.
You have understood, I expect a lot from you. We move forward in a context that must be understood calmly and lucidly. Quiet because it is not a question of changing strategy as soon as an external event appears. Lucidity, because it does not mean underestimating the crises of the world. In the past year, what has happened?
France has reaffirmed its European will, its vision, its project. France has proposed a Europe that protects, more sovereign, united and democratic but, at the same time, extremes have progressed and nationalisms have awakened. Is this a reason to give up? Certainly not. Is this a reason to say that we are wrong? Completely the opposite. We are paying here several decades of a Europe which, we must face it, has sometimes weakened, weakened, which perhaps has not always sufficiently proposed. We must actually redouble our efforts. I will come back to it.
France has also championed strong multilateralism. However, the multilateral system inherited from the past century is challenged by major players and authoritarian powers that sometimes fascinate more and more. Should we surrender? Is it the responsibility of France if this or that country chooses such sensitivity, if another sovereign power decides differently than we think? France's responsibility is to make its voice heard, to defend it. Not to substitute for the words of others. We will need to take new initiatives, build new alliances, bring the debates to the right level if we want to understand all contemporary challenges and the right level is that of a civilization debate for our values and the defense of our interests .
Last year, I had before you the four objectives of our diplomatic action, in the name of the policy that I lead for the nation: the safety of our compatriots, the promotion of common goods, influence and attractiveness of our country and, finally, a new European ambition.
These goals are still valid but the circumstances test the robustness of our principles and the constancy of our action. Today, I want to remind you of what we have done in this context, and the Minister will come back to it at length, but also to tell you how I envisage our response to this double crisis of multilateralism and of Europe. Because yes, more than a year ago, today is a moment of truth.
On the safety of the French first.
This is obviously our priority and, in particular, the fight against terrorism in the first place. To fight Islamist terrorism, we have a new law for France. We have achieved the initiative announced here even a year ago at a conference against the financing of terrorism held at the OECD last spring and Australia has agreed to chair a second conference on this topic, and I ask you to contribute to a very careful follow-up of the implementation of the Paris Agenda with all our partners. We have already obtained first results. The monitoring of transactions which until then was opaque and which directly touched our country. We must continue this work tirelessly.
But to talk about the fight against terrorism is, of course, to revert to our policy in the Sahel and the Middle East, where the terrorist groups threaten the stability of these regions, but which have also struck us directly from where the terrorists were organized. attacks that affected our country.
In the Sahel, we maintained our military commitment through Operation Barkhane. I want here to salute all our soldiers who, since 2013, are courageously committed to this difficult theater of operations. It is this presence and that of MINUSMA that have avoided the worst in the region and have allowed in particular that the elections are held this month in Mali. We have in this region achieved significant victories in recent months against the terrorist presence, but this action must continue with the same intensity but completing the presence Barkhane force of several axes started in July 2017.
First, we supported and accelerated the creation of joint G5 Sahel forces. I am convinced that our military action will indeed be even more effective if it is better articulated with the involvement of the five Sahelian countries concerned. We raised financing, encouraged the first operations of the forces. On several occasions I have traveled to see the progress and with all the heads of state and government involved we have improved our organization.
This organization is the only one that, in the long run, will allow stability because it fully involves the five countries of the Sahel concerned with their own security. We must ensure that it is implemented and in the coming weeks and months we will have to conduct new joint operations with these G5 forces. We must also strengthen cooperation with Algeria, exposed to the same risk of terrorism, as well as with Nigeria and Cameroon, against Boko Haram.
Second, we encouraged the rise of the African Union. This is what I pleaded last July at the Nouakchott Summit before the African Union and this is what I will have the opportunity to discuss shortly with President TRUMP and President KAGAME, current President in office of the African Union. We must work to create credible African peace operations, secure stable and predictable funding for them, especially between the United Nations, the African Union and subregional organizations.
Thirdly, we have complemented our military action by strengthening and simplifying our development work, by creating with Germany and several other international donors the Alliance for the Sahel. These are the complementary "3D" that I evoked last year: Diplomacy, Development and Defense, and we began to deploy the first operations in education, in agriculture, more broadly economic, in several countries of the world. a region where, each time, the terrain taken over by the enemy must be accompanied by new projects that make it possible to provide economic, educational and life perspectives for people who, at a given moment, have been seduced.
I want here to salute the action and the results obtained in Mauritania, Niger and Chad. In the next few months, we need to provide all our support for the stability and recovery of certain regions in Mali and Burkina Faso.
Fourth, the Sahel issue will not be fully resolved until stability in Libya is assured. The anomie that has reigned in Libya since 2011 has led to the structuring of organized trafficking routes for drugs, human beings and weapons. The entire Sahel-Saharan strip has always been a region of commerce and trafficking, but these roads are now those of misery and terrorism. Until we stabilize Libya, it will be impossible to stabilize the Sahel sustainably. These are the roads that keep terrorists alive today and fund them.
We have taken several initiatives to respond to this situation. First by fighting against these trafficking and smuggling networks in connection with the African Union and the International Organization for Migration.
Then, by bringing together Messrs SARRAJ and HAFTAR in France in July 2017 and, for the first time, the four main Libyan leaders last May, surrounded by the international community, to engage in a common political process.
I believe very deeply in the restoration of Libyan sovereignty and the unity of the country. It is an essential component of the stabilization of the region and therefore of the fight against terrorists and traffickers. The coming months will be decisive in this respect, they will require our mobilization to support the remarkable work of the special representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ghassan SALAME, to avoid all the temptations of divisions, since this country has become at the bottom the theater of all the influences, of all external interests. Our role for our security and that of the region, is to succeed in making progress the Paris agreement of the four stakeholders, decided last May.
The other theater of operation in our fight against terrorism is, of course, Syria. In Syria, the situation remains extremely serious and worrying. France has been very active diplomatically, from New York to Geneva, including all the capitals concerned. We have significantly increased our humanitarian aid. A cease-fire is indispensable today, but the durable solution to this conflict will be political, we know it is political.
France was the first to propose the rapprochement of the positions of the Western and Arab states on the one hand, and the three so-called Astana guarantors on the other. We have joined Germany and Egypt in the "Small Group" which will hold a new ministerial meeting in September with the United States, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. We have strengthened our dialogue with Turkey on Syria to an unprecedented level, despite our substantive differences in the Northeast region. The coordinating mechanism created in Saint Petersburg with Russia has had its first impact, especially in humanitarian terms, by giving in to our principles and acting through non-governmental organizations working in the field to conduct humanitarian operations. for the civilian population.
In this respect, I wish to commend the remarkable and courageous work of all the NGOs on the ground.
Many things have evolved, we have, I believe, succeeded in rebuilding an essential European path in the Syrian crisis, but we are not mistaken, we are on this subject also in the hour of truth. We are probably addressing the last months of the conflict with a critical humanitarian challenge in the Idleb region. And we are at a crossroads to succeed in precisely leading this inclusive political solution that we believe in, which alone will allow Eastern churches, but also Kurds, Yesidis, all ethnic and religious minorities to to have a place in the Syria of tomorrow.
Our lines on the Syrian conflict are clear: the fight against Daesh and the terrorist groups that threaten the security of Europe, the support for the civilian population and the promotion of an inclusive diplomatic road map, in connection with the United Nations.
I entrusted to my Personal Envoy on Syria, Ambassador François SENEMAUD, the mission to advance these objectives in relation to all the ministries concerned. But the situation is alarming today, because the regime threatens to create a new humanitarian tragedy in the region of Idleb and shows no desire so far to negotiate any political transition. This means further pressure on the regime and its allies, and I am expecting a lot from Russia and Turkey, given their role and the commitments they have made.
We see those who would like, once the war against Daesh is over, to facilitate what some call a return to normalcy. Bashar El-ASSAD would remain in power, the refugees from Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, would return home, and Europe and a few others would rebuild.
If I consider from the first day that our first enemy is Daesh and that I have never made the dismissal of Bashar El-ASSAD a precondition for our diplomatic or humanitarian action, I think that such a scenario would nevertheless be a mistake fatal. Who provoked these millions of refugees? Who massacred his own people? It is not up to France to designate the future leaders of Syria, any more than to another country. But it is our duty and our interest to ensure that the Syrian people will be in a position to do so.
This is why the condition of the unity, the stability of Syria and therefore the sustainable eradication of Islamist terrorism, is indeed the construction of this inclusive political solution that requires constitutional reform and the establishment of an electoral process that will allow all Syrians, including those who have fled the Bassar El-ASSAD regime, to choose their own leader. This action and these principles are, in my opinion, decisive for our security, even today and tomorrow, because what has made it possible for more than 15 years to make the terrorist groups prosper, be it Al Qaida, Daesh or Al-Nosra?
Economic hardship, authoritarian regimes cannot protect more people, the widespread corruption, but also the non-respect of the sovereignty of these countries by foreign powers, it is this that has fed the discourse even of the islamists, which led to the exploitation of all the frustrations and discourse antioccidental. Do not reproduce, therefore, not these errors. Respect the sovereignty of Syria, but have respect for it really, in allowing people to express themselves and embody it. It is the sense of combat and diplomatic policy that we need to pursue with the representative of the secretary-general of the United Nations Staffan de MISTURA, to converge the Syrians, the Small Group, Astana, the States of the region around a single roadmap that is inclusive, in which only the implementation will enable a sustainable peace.
Of course, the stability of the region will also depend on our ability to handle matters of iran, I come to the moment to trade again with president ROHANI of the crisis in the Gulf, the conflict in Yemen and the israeli-palestinian issue, which remains absolutely central and a matter of concern.
On these essential points, here I don’t want to be too long and I will have to express myself in the next few weeks by taking with you some concrete initiatives.
Always with the same red thread : our security as our vision of the world needed the stability of the Near and Middle East
Consider, in the contemporary environment our action for the security of the French, it is also continue our commitment to the fight against chemical weapons, and nuclear proliferation.
We have created an international partnership against impunity in cases of chemical weapons, we have led the solidarity of the european Union with the United Kingdom following the attack on Salisbury. We have in June led to the creation of a new mechanism for the allocation of such attacks within the organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons, the headquarters of which I had visited a few months earlier. These actions were necessary because we know how critical the role, the supervision of this organization is contested by some and had been weakened by the recent reforms.
The word of France was also held and our lines have been met. When the syrian regime has bombed its people with chemical weapons, we have hit several of its facilities in the night between 13 and 14 April with our allies the british and the americans, and we will continue to do so in the case of use of a proven of these weapons.
We have fought against the proliferation of nuclear weapons, accompanied by a policy of vigilance the opening between North Korea and the United States, and as we strive, against the decision by the united states, for the maintenance of the nuclear deal with Iran.
It was France, at our meeting here a year ago, which proposed the path of an enlarged negotiation with Iran on the four pillars that you know and that I then exposed to you.
This approach is progressing today, it is a compass that new partners are following, and we will do everything to help prevent a serious crisis in the coming months. A major diplomatic effort will be needed to establish a new stability framework. Our closely coordinated action, in particular with the United Kingdom, Germany and the European Union, is today to preserve and consolidate the nuclear agreement of 2015 through the opening of new negotiations, more still demanding.
France will take its responsibility on the Iranian subject, without complacency or naivety, by maintaining a close dialogue with our partners, including the Gulf States.
Talking about our security is also about Europe's security with regard to external risks.
In this respect, during the past year, we have progressed at an unprecedented pace during the last sixty years. The strengthening of our common defense policy since summer 2017, the creation of a defense fund to finance concrete initiatives, the conclusion of two strategic agreements for tanks and fighter jets between Germany and France , the conclusion with eight other member states of the European intervention initiative that I had proposed in September 2017 to promote a spirit of defense between Europeans, are now well-known and unpublished advances. Europe had never advanced so fast in defense matters.
Europe has realized that it must protect itself and France has in this context assumed all its responsibilities, through the law of military programming promulgated on July 14th, which restores an updated strategic vision facing these new threats to our country. and consistent ways to respond to them.
France and Europe have taken note of the new contemporary threats and the fact that we needed strategic autonomy and defense to respond to them.
In the coming months, I will be carrying out a project to strengthen European solidarity in the field of security. We must indeed give more substance to Article 42-7 of the Treaty on European Union, first invoked by France in 2015, after the attacks. France is ready to enter into a concrete discussion between European States on the nature of the mutual links of solidarity and mutual defense implied by our commitments under the Treaty. Europe can no longer restore its security to the United States alone. It is up to us today to take our responsibilities and guarantee security and therefore European sovereignty.
We must take all the consequences of the end of the cold war. Today, alliances still have all their relevance, but the balances, sometimes, the automatisms on which they were built are to be revisited. And that also implies for Europe to draw all the consequences. This reinforced solidarity will involve revisiting the European defense and security architecture. On the one hand, by initiating a renewed dialogue on cyber security, chemical weapons, conventional weapons, territorial conflicts, space security or the protection of polar areas, especially with Russia.
I hope that we launch a comprehensive reflection on these topics with all of our European partners in the broad sense, and therefore with Russia. Substantial progress towards resolving the Ukrainian crisis, as well as respect for the OSCE framework – I am thinking in particular of the situation of observers in Donbass – will of course be prerequisites for real progress with Moscow. But that should not stop us from working right now between Europeans. I'm counting on you for that.
On the other hand, we will revisit this European architecture by reaffirming the relevance of the Council of Europe, which France will chair in 2019 the Committee of Ministers, and our democratic values. On this subject we do not have to give in to any fascination whatsoever, and which we see appearing everywhere in the European Union; these fascinations for the illiberal democracies or for a form of efficiency that would pass by the renunciation of all our principles. No. Our security depends on the reaffirmation of our values, human rights which are at the very foundation, not only of the Council of Europe, but of the European Union, and the defense of all those who wear them every day. day, I think of non-governmental organizations, intellectuals, artists, activists, journalists. And on this subject too, we will have to take, in particular, on the sidelines of the General Assembly of the United Nations several initiatives.
The second goal I assigned a year ago to our diplomacy is the promotion of the commons, the protection of the planet, culture, the education of our children, the health of populations, trade or the digital space are the elements of World Heritage that we must defend. But for that, it is necessary first of all collective rules, accepted by all, essential to allow the good cooperation, and thus the progresses in the defense of these common goods. The first threat to our common goods is the crisis of multilateralism itself.
Multilateralism is in fact going through a major crisis that is coming into all of our diplomatic actions, first and foremost, because of American policy. The doubt about NATO, the unilateral and aggressive trade policy leading to a quasi-commercial war with China, Europe and a few others, the withdrawal of the Paris agreement, the exit of the Iranian nuclear agreement are so many brands. The partner with whom Europe had built the post-war multilateral order seems to be turning its back on this shared history. France, each time, was the first and clearest in its opposition to these decisions, but while seeking, each time, to convince before these decisions are made, and to maintain the indispensable quality dialogue between our two countries. And I fully claim that.
China, while actively participating in the classic multilateral game, promotes its own vision of the world, its own vision of reinvented, more hegemonic multilateralism. Other powers do not really play the game of multilateral co-operation, and the collapse of this supposed Western order would not cause them so much difficulty.
In this context, France is sometimes criticized for continuing the dialogue, the efforts with the United States, while it is obvious, even in the current circumstances, that the dialogue with Washington remains essential. And I must tell you that the situation is in my eyes very different from what is described most of the time. Firstly because the movement of isolationism or unilateralism, I should say, that the United States lives is not totally new, it has already existed in the distant past, if we refer to JACKSON, but it had already begun with the previous administration in certain theaters of operations and in certain regions.
This American position, of course, weakens contemporary multilateralism because it hinders efficiency and can lead to the emergence of alternative models that are more hegemonic and disrespectful of our values. But to me, it must be seen more as a symptom than a cause, the symptom of the crisis of contemporary capitalist globalization and the accompanying liberal Westphalian model.
This globalization and this multilateralism have had positive effects that must not be underestimated: they have lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty on the planet, they ended an ideological conflict that divided the world, they have allowed a phase of unprecedented prosperity and freedom, the peaceful expansion of international trade, which is a reality of the last decades. However, this economic, social and political order is in crisis. First, because it has not been able to regulate the excesses of its own: trade imbalances that have deeply affected some regions, losers of globalization, long-forgotten environmental disasters, considerable inequalities within our societies and between our companies.
And from Brexit to the contemporary American position, it is this discomfort with contemporary globalization that is expressed. Simply, the answer to my eyes does not go by unilateralism, but by a reinvention, a new conception of contemporary globalization. Then, this capitalist globalization has generated an acceleration of financial flows, a hyper-concentration of techniques, talents, but also profits that have made emerge actors who jostle and weaken our collective rules, and big winners as big losers.
Finally, because everywhere in the world, the deep identities of peoples have resurfaced, with their historical imaginaries. It is a fact. Those who believed in the advent of a globalized people, protected from the bites of history, were deeply mistaken. Everywhere in the world, the deep psyche has returned to each of our peoples, and it is true, from India to Hungary, via Greece, to the United States. Look at it more closely, it is sometimes diverted, sometimes exacerbated, but it is a fact that says something about the return of peoples. It's a good thing no doubt, in any case, I believe it.
This is the sign that this undifferentiated globalization did not allow us to respond to everything, that it even failed to answer a few points, and that we must therefore rethink the rules and practices given precisely these failures, of these transformations. So, the real question is not so much whether I am going to take Donald TRUMP by the arm at the next summit, but how we will collectively grasp this moment of great transformations that we are experiencing, and which our societies are all facing.
The great demographic transformation, which is shaking Africa today like Europe, and all continents, it must be said. The great ecological and environmental transformation, more glaring than ever. The great transformation of inequalities and the great technological transformation. The role of France is to propose a humanist way to meet these challenges, and with Europe precisely, to propose a new collective organization.
This implies first and foremost, and this is the prerequisite, if I may say so, to change somewhat our diplomatic approach. We can no longer be content to follow the political evolutions or the declarations of the traditional actors without trying to better decipher the deep identities, the forces that are at work and determine the course of events in many countries. We have seen, to some extent, what we did not want to see, of political events, these last semesters, without questioning ourselves, without looking enough at the deep identities, the collective imaginations of the peoples that I evoked. just now. I think we need to do it more and reinvent our own methods.
And sometimes, what we do not want to see happens, because there is a deep logic, peculiar to the people. It is probably necessary to understand more the intimacy, to better anticipate this course of things. But we must also grasp what is progressive and humanistic in these visions of the world, and therefore the ways and means of new initiatives, and seek in each of these countries our allies, the ways of passage, the means to build new cooperations and alliances.
We must agree to do so with alliances of circumstance, rather tactical alliances, concrete according to the subjects, and on the basis of clear principles and objectives, always with respect for national popular sovereignty. I already mentioned it. This limits military interventionism or, more precisely, it requires always to put our action in a dynamic and a political project brought closer to the people. But it also means that we must, every time, work to ensure that all non-state actors contribute to this new regulation of the world, abide by the rules, and can not be somehow stowaways or hidden referees.
The answer does not go by unilateralism, but by a reorganization of our action around some strategic common goods, and by the construction of new alliances. First, it is in the fight against climate change, first, the Paris climate agreement must continue to be defended. We see every day, with the intensification of climate extremes and natural disasters, the confirmation of the urgency of this fight. And we continue to lead it, and we will continue with concrete actions.
The One Planet Summit, which France took the initiative with the UN and the World Bank, on December 12 in Paris, made it possible to adopt new, substantial financial commitments. A new international follow-up summit will be held on September 26 in New York. We must continue to mobilize all actors involved in this fight: companies, non-governmental organizations, local authorities, major international foundations.
This fight for the planet will remain at the heart of our foreign policy, as shown by the place taken by this theme in my visits to the Holy See, China and India, especially with the first summit. of the International Solar Alliance that we organized with India. It must also be reflected in the negotiation and adoption of a new global environment pact, which I believe is a priority objective, and which will involve the mobilization of all our diplomacy, but also through active preparation major milestones of negotiations on biodiversity in 2019 and 2020. And a mobilization on the subject of the oceans as poles which will imply, again, the mobilization of many positions.
This environmental diplomacy is major to respond to this great upheaval in the world. It is major because it characterizes the French and European commitment in this area, because it allows to forge new alliances, especially with China and several other powers, and thus build, again, new form of cooperation and because it allows us to respond very deeply to our interests in the short, medium and long term.
The second universal good that we have placed at the heart of our policy of international cooperation is education, culture, knowledge. France, in fact, showed its commitment by organizing with Senegal the reconstitution conference of the Global Partnership for Education in Dakar, a few months ago, which raised more than two billion euros for the education in the world, especially the education of young girls, and for which, France has multiplied its contribution by 10.
In my view, this is not only our universalist and humanist role, but also the most essential contribution we can make to the demographic crisis I mentioned earlier. Wherever demographics blaze recklessly, it is because education has declined, and in particular, the education of young girls. And this is a speech that France must know how to wear. How much I was attacked a little over a year ago, I carried this speech to Hamburg, but African leaders have taken it back, carried it, and apply it with courage.
But wherever demography has flared up with seven or eight children per woman, this is where forced marriages have resumed, where the education of girls has receded. And let me see the countries where all the young women have chosen to have eight or nine children, let me introduce them, before saying that it would be a form of neo-imperialism to hold these speeches in Paris, no, we must above all help those who hold them in each of their capital.
The struggle for education is the best answer to all obscurantism and totalitarianism. Education, culture, intelligence are at the heart of this fight that we must fight everywhere. It is the only sustainable answer to the global demographic challenge. And this is how we will fight deeply against inequalities, especially between women and men. And that's why I have made education, in our country as well as internationally, a top priority.
And I deeply believe that on this subject, France has a new role to play, first, because it is its history, its tradition, for a year, we have built an ambitious education strategy, from kindergarten to university, which I believe gives a special credibility to our country in this regard. But let us also take a closer look at what we are, and the assets we have, we have in Paris the headquarters of three key international organizations in these fields: UNESCO, whose new Director General has begun to carry out resolute action that We strongly support the OECD, which has gained undisputed credibility in assessing educational performance, the International Organization of La Francophonie, which is also a strong ambition and a priority.
And in recent years we have launched several projects, the ALIPH initiative – to protect endangered cultural heritage and many others – that further strengthens this strength. Add to that our increased role within the Global Partnership for Education that I wish even more active and present in Paris, we have everything to make France a global ecosystem of knowledge, intelligence and culture, that you must shine throughout the world, through academic, scientific and research cooperation.
I believe that it is both an essential common good that we must defend, but I believe it is also a tremendous lever of influence for our country.
Third common good is health. On this subject, France will resume its commitments by meeting on 10 October 2019, in Lyon, the replenishment conference of the Global Fund against AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. But in the meantime, I hope that we will resume with force the important fight against fake drugs, which France had initiated, and that we intensify our involvement in the fight against major pandemics, I think in particular the fight against Ebola in Central Africa.
The fourth fundamental common good is the digital space. We must simultaneously support its growth, invest in the promotion of our strategic and economic interests, and frame it so that it can be accessible to all and protect our fundamental rights. This great upheaval is exactly the meaning of the Tech For Good Summit, held in Paris last spring, and which we will renew every year, to encourage reflection on the essential regulations in these new sectors, with all the international players and to take concrete measures and commitments as well. Whether it is taxation, privacy, social rights, ethics, we must forge respectful responses to the sovereignty of countries, never accepting that such or such economic actor, such or such space of human activity, can escape our sovereignty and our vigilance.
This is the sense of the commitment we have made, particularly with the United Kingdom, at European level and at the international level, to combat the spread of terrorist messages or terrorist-related content. It is the regulatory work that we will continue to pursue at European and international level, precisely to increase good practices in the field. On November 12, in Paris, the Internet Governance Forum and the CivicTech Forum will be held at the same time, which will allow progress on these topics. I want to make France a major center of attractiveness, but also of reflection and construction of these new rules, to talk about common goods and this new grammar of globalization.
It's also about our collective organization in trade. International trade is definitely not fair, the collective organization we have today is not the most effective, but responding with absolute unilateralism and trade war is the least good answer. The answer must go through an in-depth refoundation of our international world order. That is why I invited the OECD last May to launch a joint working group between the United States, the European Union, China and Japan.
We need to clarify existing rules, improve dispute settlement, adopt more effective international regulation, and incorporate our own social and environmental requirements into our trade policy. We can not have a commercial policy that, in a way, would be thought of apart from everything.
I invite the representatives of these powers on the sidelines of November 11 in Paris to hold a first conference on this subject. I think that in a few months we will be able to build a more effective and more equitable system, and that we can not give way, again, to the hegemony of the one and the division of all.
I also believe that in social matters, our world order can be regulated much better. And I think that the 100 years of the ILO in 2019 should allow us to go further and to set a new ambition. Wherever globalization is criticized, what is criticized is these social aberrations, criticized by the middle and middle classes, in the United Kingdom, in the United States, as in our country, it is the fact that they are no longer found there, that this order has built inequalities that I mentioned earlier, which are no longer sustainable.
We must therefore think of them, not against each other, but build, as we have been able to do in other areas, the ways and means of international cooperation, which can help us to define common standards, and therefore think, here too, the convergence of those who want it, the cooperation of all. This is why I want to make the issue of inequality the major topic of the French commitment during the coming year, especially at the G7, which we will chair in 2019.
It is, in total, this refoundation of the world order which is our course. France and Europe have a historic role to play. I do not believe that the future of the world will be built on hegemonies, nor on theocracies, nor on new totalitarianisms. But that supposes an immediate jump of our democracy. We will not win this battle simply by saying that democracies are by definition right, when we everywhere see the extremes going up, and this international order falling apart. When I speak of a strong multilateralism, it means looking at what, for our fellow citizens, are key challenges, and knowing how to provide an international response.
It is indeed on the flaws of global governance and the weakening of democracies that the hard-won peace of 1918 broke down in the 1930s. That's why I took the initiative to invite to Paris for the ceremonies of 11 November, several heads of state and government will inaugurate the first Paris Peace Forum. This Forum aims to strengthen our collective action by associating States and international organizations, first and foremost the UN, with civil society: NGOs, companies, trade unions, experts, intellectuals, religious groups. International governance must be concretely expressed, and every citizen can take part.
This refoundation supposes precisely this time of reflection, and this joint jump, it is that, I hope, that we will be able to make live the 11 November next in Paris. This refoundation also supposes that we redesign our organizations, our instruments of consultation and our coalitions.
In 2019, France will preside over the G7. I hope we can renew the formats and ambitions. We must, by remaining a coherent group driven by common levels of development and democratic demands, engage in a stronger, ever-growing dialogue with China on climate and trade, with India on digital, with Africa on youth. In any case, we must not reproduce this theater of shadows and divisions which, I believe, has weakened us more than it has moved us forward. By the end of the year, I will propose to the other member countries a reform, in connection with the United States, which will take over the presidency of the G7 in 2020.
In the whole world, in Asia, in Latin America, in Africa, it is thus new balances, new relationships that we must rethink on the basis of the in-depth work that I asked you. Thus, in March and May of this year, I proposed to New Delhi and then to Sydney to work on a new strategic Indo-Pacific axis, which should not be directed against anyone and can be an essential contribution to international stability. We are an Indo-Pacific Power with over eight thousand men in the region and more than a million of our fellow citizens. We must draw all the consequences and I hope that you can decline this axis of the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, through Southeast Asia, resolutely, ambitiously and accurately.
We must indeed build a new relationship to Asia. It will be built around our essential and fruitful dialogue with China. I said that I will go there every year and I laid the groundwork for this dialogue a few months ago in X'ian. China has posed one of the most important geopolitical concepts of recent decades with its new silk routes. We can not pretend that it did not exist. We must not give in to any guilty or short-term fascination: it is a vision of globalization which has the stabilizing virtues of certain regions but which is hegemonic. And I hope that France can bring a voice of balance and preservation of both our interests and our worldview in this constructive, demanding and confident dialogue with China.
Our relationship with Japan is also essential, which will preside the G20 at the same time as the G7, and was our last guest on July 14 with Singapore and whose current cultural season in France shows the depth of our ties. Relations with India, the largest democracy in the world, and with Australia, as part of the Indo-Pacific strategy are essential. But it is more particularly with Africa that we must refound these contemporary coalitions that I mentioned at the moment and our ability precisely to influence the course of the world.
The lesson from Ethiopia, Liberia and Sierra Leone is that there is no inevitability in African instability, whether it is internal conflict or neighborly conflict. Africa is not only our interlocutor to talk about crises that affect it, it is first of all our ally to invent the great balances of the world of tomorrow. That is why I ask you all to be the actors of this dialogue: the relation with Africa, and it is an essential message that I want to make you pass here, is not that the business of our Ambassadors in Africa. When I speak of Africa, I speak of the whole African continent in its diversity and its wealth, as I explained in my speech in Ouagadougou, by inviting all the talents of our two continents, and especially young people European and African countries, to discuss their common future.
The importance of Africa for France is not only that of the nearest neighbor but also part of our identity, through our shared history, through the diasporas that I have planned to meet this autumn and it is for us the need to better involve in the renewal of our relationship with the continent these last. I also count on the contribution of the members of the Presidential Council for Africa, whom I salute for their commitment to me.
We will never win the battle that I evoked on the commons, we will never succeed in building these new cooperations and alliances for the international order that is ours without Africa. We will never win the battle for biodiversity or climate change without the active participation of African countries. I will be traveling next spring to Nairobi, at UNEP Headquarters, to continue the momentum of the One Planet Africa Summit in the field.
Africa is also the continent where the future of La Francophonie and, to a large extent, that of our language and our cultural influence are at stake. That is why I gave France's support to the candidacy endorsed by the African Union for the post of Secretary General of the International Organization of La Francophonie, in view of the Yerevan Summit on 12 October next.
We launched in Lagos last July, the season of African cultures, which will be organized in France in 2020 and will allow, for the first time, Africa to tell itself, in France, in all places of culture. N'Goné FALL will be the general commissioner of this cultural season. I will also receive this autumn the report of Bénédicte SAVOY and Felwine SARR on the temporary or definitive restitution to Africa of its cultural heritage. What we build by doing, touch by touch and I can not detail all the axes of this policy, it is in a way the conversion of a mutual look. The one that will allow France to look differently at Africa but also to Africa to say differently, to tell its own past, its own present differently to the face of the world and to build a new imagination between France and France. African continent.
I believe it is an essential part of our diplomacy because it is one of the keys to responding to the instability that exists in many parts of Africa and it is one of the keys to rebalancing our relationship. on all the plans. Africa is of course also our Mediterranean neighbor. We are attentive to the privileged relations that we have with Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia where I have already visited. I will also have the opportunity to visit Cairo in the coming months as Egypt takes over the presidency of the African Union. And I announced at the beginning of the year in Tunis the organization of a Summit of the two shores, which would be built on the basis of the current dialogue 5 5 but in an even more inclusive way, with a strong contribution from civil society . Ten years after the Union for the Mediterranean, we must find the thread of a different Mediterranean policy by drawing all the lessons from what we have succeeded and what we sometimes did not manage to do by involving all the companies but refocusing a more inclusive Mediterranean policy which is also undoubtedly one of the conditions for the reconsolidation of the Maghreb. To talk about youth, mobility, energy, academic exchanges, this policy is essential and we will, in the coming months, prepare for this Summit to be held in Marseille in early summer 2019.
Our third goal, ladies and gentlemen, is to strengthen the influence of France in this context. I mentioned it at the beginning of my speech by talking about the importance of economic diplomacy. Our country has certainly attracted this year more investment, tourism, talent but we still have many challenges. France also wins in the field of sport with the attribution of the Olympic Games of 2024 or the victory of the Blues who made vibrate all the French people by bringing back the World Cup. And this victory, the way in which our players and our fellow citizens have celebrated it, only increases expectations for France.
This increased attractiveness in all areas, your efforts have actively contributed. They were supported by the unprecedented events that we organized since the beginning of the year in Versailles, in Paris, or elsewhere on the investment with the Choose France summit, on new technologies with Vivatech or on Artificial Intelligence with the presentation of the French strategy before many international specialists at the end of the winter. I am waiting for your mobilization regarding the follow-up of these meetings which we will replicate each year, and which require a number of concrete actions.
Important announcements have already been made on these occasions by several large foreign groups, showing that it is possible to make them work at home, by deepening with them a demanding dialogue on the most complex aspects: security, taxation, the digital economy. And it is in this same spirit that I wished France to host the Olympiades des métiers in 2023 and I would like all our embassies to mobilize to support our candidacy, as it also contributes to this vital economic influence.
At the same time, we must, more than ever before, make our culture and our language shine. I have already mentioned it several times. We came out of a defensive view of language to finally promote an offensive and uninhibited policy of the promotion of French and multilingualism, which gives full importance to regional languages, which fully recognizes the place of African writers and the world over. in francophone literary creation.
I would like to thank my personal representative for the Francophonie, Leila SLIMANI, for her work in this area. We have known for years, thanks to our cooperation actions in the field, that a paradigm shift was essential. This is also why I decided to stabilize, for the second consecutive year, the budget of our cultural cooperation in 2019.
Already, we have increased by 50% the number of hours of French offered to refugees, increased by 20% the number of bilingual schools abroad labeled France Education, brought together all the operators concerned in a consortium charged training in French-speaking Africa. I also welcome the creation of a Francophone Chair at the Collège de France. These advances are considerable. They are also favored by the dynamism of the journalists of France Media World and I intend to continue with you and ask you to redouble efforts in this direction, in connection with the International Organization of the Francophonie as in connection with all operators, including TV5 Monde and the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie.
All these actions of influence will be possible and effective in addition to the economic diplomacy I mentioned, only if we restore to our policy of development aid a new ambition and by making a real policy of investment in solidarity. France, in fact, inscribes its policy of partnership and international solidarity in pursuit of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. To meet these objectives, I decided that our new policy would benefit from increased resources, after a long period of decline, to reach 0.55% of gross national income in 2022. Already, to guarantee this rise, the budget 2019 will have a billion euros in additional commitment authorizations.
But, I told you a year ago, financial means alone are not enough. This is a new method that is needed, both in France and among our partners. Already, a new governance has been put in place with the creation of a national development council. The Prime Minister received the report last Friday that he had asked MP Hervé BERVILLE and I thank him for the work he has done and the wide consultation. As he proposes, a new partnership dimension will be put in place to better involve civil society, youth, businesses and diasporas.
This involves acting as close to the field as possible. In this respect, I support the proposal to enhance the means available directly to our Embassies to encourage local initiatives. On gender equality, on support for innovation, you must be the first actors and the first relays of the political will I have expressed. I also support the idea of a new orientation and programming law to endorse our aid trajectory and to renew the framework of our international cooperation policy.
An ambitious evaluation policy will be implemented to monitor the results of this aid in full transparency and deep reorganisations will be conducted around the AFD. I also ask you to make sure that there is a high level of coherence and complementarity between our national priorities and the European programs of cooperation and development. It is, I believe, a guarantee of coherence and efficiency for all of us.
I will end my remarks with the fourth axis developed last year, probably even more relevant today, which is our European priority. In the end, throughout my speech, I stressed the importance of Europe, whether it be our security, our ability to refound the international order or to promote our own interest. To do it alone is most of the time, if not doomed, much less effective. To do so with a strong, consistent European voice is, I believe, a guarantee of our success. Since last year and our last exchange, we have proposed, we have advanced, we have already built alliances. During the speech at the Sorbonne last September, I proposed a comprehensive, ambitious vision of a more sovereign, united, more democratic Europe. On this path, we have already achieved some first results in terms of defense – I mentioned them earlier – in terms of secondment work, in terms of social and fiscal convergence, and trade policy. We will have in the coming months to continue work on migration or digital.
On this basis and taking into account the political context that our first German partner had to know, carried out a work for several months which allowed Meseberg last June to seal a historic stage between France and Germany and to build a strategic document which, on all these points, including that of a euro area budget, sets us a common agenda by 2021 which will, I believe, allow for a coherent development of this vision of a Europe sovereign, united and united that must be ours.
Culture and education; climate and energy; health and nutrition; digital and innovation: in each of these areas, we have moved forward and proposed a joint initiative. We have also adopted an ambitious method, that of talking to everyone, again in Europe. I visited in one year more than half of the countries of the European Union. I have, of course, exchanged with all, bilaterally, heads of state and government. I wanted to mark the first summer with a tour of Central and Eastern Europe and I will be in Denmark tomorrow, where no state visit has been held for thirty-six years and then in Finland.
We have sometimes forgotten certain countries in Europe on the pretext that we see them at every European Council. But there is also a need to convince and understand the profound dynamics of many European peoples to build a strong bilateral relationship that serves our European policy. Europe is not done in Brussels, in Paris, or in Berlin: it is built in the tireless diffusion of our ideas, our projects, in a non-hegemonic way.
I tell you today with gravity and humility: this European fight is just beginning. It will be long, it will be difficult. It will be at the center of the action of France throughout my mandate and especially in the year that opens, because we are in the middle of a European crisis.
Across Europe, doubts are there. Brexit is a symptom. The rise of extremes is almost a general rule and France is an exception. The divisions between the north and the south economically, between east and west on migratory issues still fracture all too often our European Union and we are now living a political crisis on migration that we face .
So what is the answer to this? Do not give up on the ambition expressed a year ago. Nothing. On the contrary, to bring more clarity and some angles that I want here, to conclude my point, to share with you. First, what Europe are we talking about? When we speak to Africa, when we speak of ourselves, when we speak of all these great challenges, the perimeter, the outline of this Europe must not be the subject of a form of intellectual comfort either. The European Union is not written at all times and the changes in its perimeter are neither a tragedy nor necessarily a movement that we should undergo. There is of course Brexit but I draw collective attention: is not there something absurd in a European Union that today will devote a colossal energy to discuss Brexit? and, at the same time, would like to discuss the start of an accession negotiation with Albania or any other country in the Western Balkans? All of these countries have something to do with our history and our strategy but are we here, in this insider and lucid circle, can we be satisfied with this course of events? Do we think this is the best way to meet our challenges? Do we think things are going the way they are, when it comes to the perimeter of Europe, what Europe do we want? Absolutely not.
So for Brexit, I hope that the agreement will be reached by the end of the year by setting the framework for our future relations. But I repeat, Brexit is a sovereign choice that must be respected, but it is a choice that can not be made at the expense of the integrity of the European Union. It is the choice of the British people for itself, but not for others, and France wishes to maintain a strong, privileged relationship with London, but not at the cost of the dissolution of the European Union. And that integrity is defended by the capital of which it is the cause, in its own country, is one thing, but we have to defend the integrity of our values, our base and the European Union. And so we will have on this point a demanding dialogue, indispensable, but it will be necessary, whatever be to think the relation of the European Union after the Brexit with London, it is indispensable. And the thinking is precisely to define at least a strategic partnership to build.
This is the same requirement that I want at our borders, I have already mentioned the case of Russia earlier, the framework of a European security and defense architecture, but we can not sustainably build the Europe without thinking about our relationship with Russia and Turkey. To think it without complacency and without naivety. Do we think here again, in a lucid and sincere way, that we can continue to negotiate membership of the European Union of Turkey, when the daily reaffirmed project of the Turkish President with whom I had a Unpublished intensity of contacts for a little over a year, is a pan-Islamic project regularly presented as anti-European, whose regular measures are rather against our principles? Absolutely not. And here too we must go out of hypocrisy to build a solution seems to me more effective, more consistent for us. So we need to build a strategic partnership that is not EU membership, but a strategic partnership with Russia and Turkey, because they are two important powers for our collective security, because We must link them to Europe because the history of these peoples has been with Europe and together we must build our future. And so, on all these levels, we need a relationship that we have to reinvent, on a demanding plane, but without yielding to the sort of bureaucratic gropings with which we have become accustomed on these subjects.
We came out of the cold war and President ERDOGAN's Turkey is not President KEMAL's Turkey. These two realities are there and we must draw all the consequences.
Then we must assume, accept, carry the fact that Europe will be a Europe of several circles, because it is already the case and therefore we must accept that there is a Europe wide, perhaps wider than the European Union, the Council of Europe being, moreover, this broadest basis, based on our principles, which are sometimes called into question within the Union itself. But there is therefore room for a broad Europe, a place for a common market and at the heart of it the place for strengthened cooperation and stronger integration. And that means having a little audacity and agreeing to revisit taboos on both sides, transfer taboos on one side of the Rhine, treaty change taboos on the other side of the Rhine . And on this point, France's vision today, which we will bear in the context of the coming deadlines, presupposes a revision of the treaties, be it the reform of the European Union or of the euro zone. I wish it and I hope that we can build it on the basis of the ongoing democratic consultations, on the basis of the results of the forthcoming European elections and intergovernmental work that will be required in the coming semesters. Because we need to rethink our collective organization, we need a more efficient and smaller Commission and we need to rethink the strategic axes of this Europe.
Finally, we will be and we are today collectively tested because this Europe, I have said many times and I have just talked about its perimeter, its extent, has to face all the contemporary challenges of which I am speak since just now. And we have only one credible European answer: that of our strategic autonomy. The question is not whether we can convince the United States of America, it is a great people and a great country, the question is whether the United States of America looks to us as a power with strategic autonomy, this is the real question that is posed for Europe today. And it is clear that today it is not the case, we must look at ourselves with lucidity, even if it is cruel, I do not believe very sincerely today that China or the United States United States of America think that Europe is a power with a strategic autonomy comparable to theirs. I do not believe that.
And I believe that if we can not build that, we are preparing a morose aftermath. And so how to build this true European sovereignty? Well, by responding to the challenges I mentioned earlier, by making Europe the model for this humanist refoundation of globalization. This is our challenge and that is exactly the debate that is being put today to the European people in the context of the elections that are coming.
There is clear choice on the one hand, Europe is not efficient, it no longer responds to these challenges of globalization, it is not totally false. It does not have strategic autonomy, so you have to disaggregate it.
Then the most sophisticated will say to you: we are to disintegrate it, except when it brings us something, because Italy is against Europe which is not solidarity on the migratory level, but it is for Europe Structural Funds when I listen to certain ministers; the president of the Italian council knows that, he is on a much more structured line. Viktor ORBAN's Hungary, she has never been against Europe's structural funds, the common agricultural policy, but she is against Europe when it comes to holding great speeches about Christianity. And so there is a clear path of European opportunism, but of the claimed nationalism, disintegrate this bureaucratic structure, it brings us nothing, we pretend to forget what it brings us and assume a clear line.
On the other hand, we need to bring a clear line, that of a desire for European sovereignty, how and how can Europe alone provide an answer to many of our challenges? And I think that's the case, and I think that's particularly the case with the current political crisis in Europe. I am talking about a political crisis, because the topics we talked about all summer on migration are above all a political crisis. Europe had to endure a real migration crisis in 2015, when millions of Afghans and Syrians came because of the conflicts. Europe had to suffer, a little more than a year ago a real migration crisis from Libya but these flows have been divided by ten in recent weeks, it is not a migration crisis, it is a political crisis, that of the capacity precisely to answer this challenge.
On this subject, we have to face the facts, why do we have this European and especially Italian political crisis? Because there was no European solidarity. Why did we have a political crisis in Greece before? Because there was no European solidarity. That's why I have always linked European solidarity with a real policy of sovereignty and therefore what happens in Italy, we produced it politically by our lack of solidarity. Does that excuse the xenophobic discourse, the facilities? I do not believe it and I believe that these same xenophobes bring no solution to the evil they denounce. Because, that they go to seek the solidarity of those of which they want to separate, great good does to them, it does not work often, and besides all those who carry a nationalist or unilateral voice get along very well to denounce the Europe, rarely agree to find common solutions, including for themselves. The axes we are talking about bring no solution, none.
And so on this subject, I believe that France, with the constructive partners and the European Commission, must put in place, contribute to put in place a perennial device, respectful of the humanitarian principles and the solidary and effective law. Which means that we must not and can not get out of the right to asylum as we have thought. I listen every day speeches that say "do not take people, do not accept them, it's weakness, good will," France, and I welcome, is one of the countries that during the political crisis of this summer has welcomed the most refugees, 250, I invite you to remember the proportion of these figures, because on the basis of the five OFPRA missions that we organized, we identified them as under the right to asylum. But who are the politicians, basically responsible, lucid, who can explain to us that we should give up the respect of the right of asylum in France and in Europe? But this right of asylum, it is in our constitution, we French, it is in all our European texts. The key simply is to accept this differentiation. There are those who are entitled to asylum that must be accepted unconditionally by having the right organization, with the other side of the Mediterranean and with the rest of Africa and there is then a migration policy to build at European level with Africa to avoid, reduce, control migration flows linked to economic migration and organize a much more effective return to them.
This is the very meaning of the law that will be promulgated in a few days and that we have taken for France, it is the very meaning of the action that we carry in Europe, and the partnership that we want to build, with the all African states, as we started to do, in Abidjan, at the end of last year, in the dialogue between the European Union and the African Union, in Paris, a year ago for day, with the African Union and many countries of origin and transit, and with many of our partners, this is the right answer to the migration crisis.
It is therefore a demanding European policy that respects our values, but which, because we have found the common rules of border protection, and internal solidarity, will finally be effective. France has a migratory challenge, we are the country that received almost the most requests last year, the second country of asylum applications, just over 100,000, but none arrived by so-called primary roads. It is the inability of Europe to manage the migratory subject that we have had so many asylum applications. And so I invite all those who hold speeches on this subject to look at the reality of the facts. If we have a more efficient organization at the European level, then we have some of the answer to our own challenges, and sometimes to our own fears.
It must be built in a sustainable and demanding way with all the partners involved. But more broadly, you have understood, on each of these topics, I will plead for Europe to be that power which, as I just said, for the subject of migration, and well, will build the solutions we believe in globalization. An economic and commercial power through a stronger euro area, a defense of our strategic and commercial interests, a financial independence with mechanisms that we must propose, and this is the request we made to the Commission, to establish the financial autonomy of Europe, and finally put an end to the extraterritoriality of certain financial and monetary decisions.
An economic and commercial power that will build tax and social convergence within it. I want a Europe that is digital power, and artificial intelligence, through the initiatives we started to take, a fund for breakthrough innovations, a real digital single market, a taxation just digital actors. A Europe of ecological, food and sanitary power, which allows everywhere in Europe to guarantee the same rights of access to a healthy food and a healthier environment.
This vision, we wear it; to lead it alone among other European actors who do not follow it is impossible, it is at the European level that we must lead, and that we will lead to the end the fight for the end of glyphosate, that France has initiated, I remind you, and without France, it was fifteen years of authorization that were again granted to glyphosate throughout Europe, but also for a single price of carbon, for a real energy sovereignty, for a real strategy of renewable.
I believe in this vision of a Europe where at the time of choice which is ours, there is the possibility for a progressive humanism, in Europe, I believe that there is the possibility for a way which will make it possible fully perceive to our fellow citizens that Europe, on many issues that worry them is not just part of the answer, but the heart of our strategic autonomy, the heart of the answer we can bring to our peoples, and vis-à-vis our partners.
We must write and tell the history of the Europe we want, demonstrate its concrete results, to convince our fellow citizens that the road to cooperation in Europe, in the world, is the only one that can lead to mutual trust in the interest of France.
Ladies and Gentlemen Ambassadors, I have presented to you our priorities for the coming year around these four pillars that I defined last year. You will implement them under the leadership of the Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves LE DRIAN, whom I thank again for the tireless work he is doing, in Paris and around the world, effectively supported by Nathalie LOISEAU and Jean-Baptiste LEMOYNE and by all the agents of the Quai d'Orsay, in the service of our country. I wish to express to them all, express to you all my gratitude for the dedication, the skills, the intelligence, the commitment and the courage.
On each of the issues I have just described, the battle is not won, and France, sometimes, seems to have a solitary voice, in any case, it is what some denounce or would like to mock. I do not think this voice is solitary, I think it is expected, I think it is desired, and I believe it is true to what our story is, I think it must break too with habits or automatisms, and that it must seek everywhere this demand which is imposed on us.
Forty years ago, almost to the day, SOLJENITSYNE was giving Harvard a very big speech that was called after the Decline of Courage, and he was already saying just about everything I've just described, about the fragility of Western world that he had discovered yet and which was perceived as the place of all promises. What we need to stop today is precisely the decline of courage.
And so to face it, our vocation is everywhere, and that is what I expect from you, to be a mediating power, a diplomatic, military, cultural, educational, national and European power, and to be always mediator, mediator, that means that France never gives up her voice, but that she always seeks to build alliances on this basis, it is not a power of compromise, it is not a median power it is a power of mediation, the one that seeks precisely to build this international order which alone, I believe very deeply, will allow us to make a little more human and humanist, the globalization that is ours.
I know I can count on you, because your daily commitment to our country is the DNA of your business and your pride. I thank you for that.
2018 08 27 17.31.8EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is a translation. Please accept our apologies should the grammar and/or sentence structure is not be perfect.