MIL OSI Translation. Government of the Republic of France statements from English to French – Published August 31, 2018
Section: International, development and francophonie
Only the authentic pronouncementHelsinki, August 30, 2018
THE PRESIDENT (translation from the French): Thank you very much Prime Minister, dear Juha, for these words and I am very happy indeed that we had the opportunity to meet in Helsinki, very happy to see how a year ago when we met in Paris that our exchanges on bilateral and European subjects are always so rich.
We started after the first exchanges last evening at our dinner together at the University of Aalto which is really at the forefront of innovation in the image of all Finland, with also, he It must be said, a talent for simple and direct communication with this program Startup Sauna that included a whole lot of innovations, simplicity, efficiency. I was very pleased to see the very strong intricacy of both higher education, public research, private research, engineering schools, entrepreneurs, businesses and government around this same innovation objective.
With the Prime Minister we have had the opportunity to come back to this subject and many others at our working lunch but with an essential point which is the shared attachment to the values on which Europe is founded and that you come to recall, Prime Minister, and the need for a strong Europe that asserts its model in the world. This strong Europe is what we want first in terms of innovation and research and I believe that we share a common conviction to further strengthen bilateral relations in this area. This is the aim of several confirmed programs and strategic documents signed in this area at the level of public / private research and entrepreneurship. It also allows our companies to develop faster and therefore it completes a real European financing market with the Banking Union on the one hand that will occupy us in the coming weeks and on which we have exchanged very long and very technically but which is one of the components to succeed in developing our businesses but more broadly a union of capital markets that our Europe needs and which our companies need to grow faster.
It is also the common desire that we share to have a true digital single market with simplifications so that our companies have access to a truly European market and can ensure a competition against the Chinese, the Americans, with European standards like we did it with regard to respect for individual life with the new general data protection regulation. We want to develop it to create common industrial standards in terms of digital or artificial intelligence and also to do so that European creators are fully respected, this is the object of our battle for the fair compensation of the artistic creation. And so innovation, creation, higher education are in my eyes a place of cooperation, a very strong area of cooperation between our two countries at the European level and moreover several of the actors crossed this morning already participate in European universities and we also came back on the initiative to create an investment fund in disruptive innovation at European level.
The Europe that we want is also the Europe that protects, the Europe that protects on migratory subjects, you have recalled the long European Council that we had on this subject in this respect and we have returned here again very well. detail on this subject where France carries a vision and a demanding, broad approach that does not want to give in to our principles and to the universal rights that we defend but which wishes to articulate a complete answer in migratory matter which requires responsibility of each Member State and solidarity well orchestrated European. Here again we came back in great detail and especially on the execution of such a plan.
The Europe that protects is of course also that of European defense, we came back after the long exchange I had with President NIINISTÖ this morning on the subject, our closeness of views is strong, we have the same threat analysis and willingness to provide common answers in this regard. As such, the documents signed today as the coming exchanges are for me very encouraging in this area.
And then you also mentioned it, there are two points that hold me at heart of this Europe that both protects and carries ambition, it is this Europe of climate and food sovereignty. We have a lot to do in our agricultural cooperation and we want to have a common vision, both an ambition of an agricultural policy but also a food policy that supposes to accompany our farmers in the transitions that are theirs. but also to ensure quality food for all our fellow citizens, which presupposes a real organization and a real European ambition in this area. Climate sovereignty is the one that will impose decisions, as I mentioned earlier, in terms of carbon prices, in terms of organizing a single European carbon market but also by the concrete support of certain initiatives that you are carrying and that France fully supports in particular with regard to cooperation in the Arctic.
We also mentioned the need to strengthen the Economic and Monetary Union by returning as I mentioned both on the subjects of banking union but also on the basis of the text discussed on a Franco-German basis in Meseberg where we We have defined the ways of evolution of the Eurogroup, the Economic and Monetary Union and we have had a long discussion on this point. I think it is extremely important that in the coming weeks and months we continue to move forward because for me this is also a condition of our strategic autonomy in terms of financial, economic and therefore innovation and we We came back to this point in detail as I did a few weeks ago with our Portuguese or Spanish colleagues and we can come back to it if you wish in the context of the questions. But we came back with Prime Minister SIPILÄ in the detail of the Meseberg declaration to see how to build together a better integrated euro area which also articulates more the principles of responsibility and solidarity.
On these topics I have been seeing for a year a real convergence between us, there are disagreements, we do not necessarily have the same stories, the same sensibilities, we have mentioned them, but there is a real convergence and significant progress which were made during our discussion, which I welcome. These exchanges are to my mind all the more important that in less than a year Finland will have to take the presidency of the European Union just after the elections we will have in May and so it is important to start the to prepare. These exchanges are also important because they come to conclude a trip of three days that I just made in northern Europe, Denmark and here in Finland before returning to Paris. What I have sought to do is on the one hand to say in a very transparent way both to the leaders but also to public opinion what ambitions France holds for Europe, the European Union, the euro zone and all our projects, but it is also to do it in a spirit of respect, of dialogue and at the bottom of shared agreements and of will to converge, that's Europe.
Europe is not a continent that agrees on everything, it is a continent that until 70 years ago has always been warring and therefore we live for 70 years in a miracle to the world. The millennial scale is that there is no longer a war in Europe. We must build a new stage, it is obvious, otherwise this Europe will be dismantled in front of the geopolitical risks and its own divisions. And so there is a very simple choice and for me this trip of three days reinforces me, there is either the will to take Europe hostage of the demagogy which serves the political leaders and to say "all your problems come from Europe "," a bridge collapses, it is Europe "," you are worried because there are migrations in Africa, there is a rampant population in Africa, it is the Europe! ". These are not what are sometimes called populists, they are nationalist demagogues. They want one thing, they forget first what Europe has brought us for 70 years and they want one thing, the division, the nationalist withdrawal behind every little thing that separates us and the lie of state by explaining that our responsibilities do not exist as leaders but that they are always referred to others, a strange decision-maker who would do for us, no.
And then there is what we have done together which is this demanding journey, this trade of agreements and disagreements which is the essence of Europe. Umberto ECO, I recalled in Denmark, said "the language of Europe is translation", the method of Europe is the constant dialogue is the ability to carry an ambition and build a compromise on this basis. We have sometimes forgotten ambition in recent years and therefore we must find the strong ambition, the acceleration of some decisions but this ability to respect each other and to do what is the strength of Europe , its diversity. And so I come back from this Nordic trip more convinced still and I was at the end of our exchange, dear Juha, that the future in Europe is in this diversity and this ability to build bridges, projects shared ambitions and to bring a progressive Europe to the face of selfishness and nationalist
Thank you.
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