Transcript of the joint press conference of the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron and the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Angela Merkel

MIL OSI Translation. Government of the Republic of France statements from English to French – Published June 21, 2018

Category: Europe

ONLY THE PRONOUNCED FAITH.

Thank you very much Chancellor, thank you dear Angela for, first, the organization of this Franco-German Council of Ministers and the exchange we have just had here in Meseberg, and the report that was fact. This summit was expected and I believe we are at the rendezvous.

This summit comes – and I believe we must not in any way make it a mystery – at a moment of truth in Europe and a moment of truth in each of our States and for our continent. On economic, commercial and financial subjects, on the subjects of foreign policy, defense as the major subjects of migration, it is today a real choice of society which is under discussion. It may even be a choice of civilization with, on the one hand, those who would like to say that Europe is good at unraveling and no longer able to meet its challenges, and on the other hand, those who believe – I think I can say it, as we do – that we can move this Europe forward by making it both more sovereign and more united because, on the geopolitical and migratory subjects as well as on the economic subjects the challenge we face today is whether we want to strengthen our ability to protect our citizens from decisions coming from abroad, the great geopolitical risks and to be more united, to have more solidarity between we and therefore defend Europe to which we believe.

On all of these topics, we have shown, I believe, through today's discussion and joint work, that our choice was clear, it is both a choice that allows us to respond to the seriousness of the problem. historical moment that we live, refuses to stammer our history and allows, I believe it also very deeply, much more efficiency.

On the geopolitical, defense or migratory topics, the question is how can we better defend, protect our Europe against the big geopolitical and international uncertainties which, today, through the subject of migrations, come in some way to meet the the lives of our fellow citizens who, for a long time, were able to believe that international subjects or subjects of development were distant subjects that were reserved for summits between heads of state and government, for discussions between diplomats. No, it's all held. Our world is united and we are not a dive island in the middle of nowhere.

On this subject, the choice we have made here is reaffirmed and clear, so we want more sovereignty and unity. This is the spirit of the text we adopted in the area of ​​foreign policy, where we wanted more coordination and, according to forms to be discussed, the will to have an approach in terms of foreign policy and security articulated , coordinated at European level. This has fueled our progress in defense policy in recent months with permanent structured cooperation, but also with the European Defense Fund. We completed it with several of our colleagues – we will be 10 in total – by a European intervention initiative that will better coordinate our intervention doctrines, to advance from next week, when it will be launched, to bring our strategic cultures closer together, to exchange through our planning work or military personnel and thus to have a much more pragmatic approach together.

This is also what led us in the right line of what we had outlined on July 13, 2017 together to concretize today the launch of two major joint programs of ground combat with the tank of the future and aerial combat with the airplane of the future. These are, I believe, on this subject, extremely important progress that should be welcomed.

It is with this same determination that we believe very deeply in a European response to the migration challenge. This challenge, we have not just discovered, we did not discover last week, but we are very clearly together determined to act in a European way and in a coordinated manner with all Member States that have with us topics in common and all that can be done at this level, at European level and therefore with all 28 Member States.

We will continue in the coming hours and days to work very closely together so that we can make proposals in this area around three axes in line with what the Chancellor has just recalled. A first axis, the one we both discussed with our Italian friends, the one that I will also have the opportunity to discuss with the Spanish Prime Minister Saturday noon, is our ability to work more with countries of origin and transit. This subject is not new either. We have done a lot in recent years with each other and again in recent months with several countries in North Africa and especially Libya. This is the very meaning of the stabilization action we are taking in Libya and which we are going to intensify with, here too, concrete initiatives that we are preparing for the coming days, particularly the Libyan coastguard actions. to develop information and prevention actions by UNHCR and IOM to dismantle illegal channels and smuggling networks and dismantle all funding mechanisms.

And so we will intensify joint initiatives in this area to better prevent these flows, which is both more effective and more humanitarian because the humanitarian risk begins the second we leave the shores, the shores of Libya or those other countries. And we have seen it unfortunately several times in the Mediterranean.

Secondly, we want a better protection of the European borders and we support in this matter the proposals of the European Commission and in particular by significantly increasing the resources of the Frontex agency up to 10,000 men, by deploying these resources. support in the countries that manage the external borders of Europe to gradually make it a true European border police force. We also want to have a real European asylum agency and harmonize our rights on this issue.

Finally, the third pillar of the action we want to lead in this area within the European Union is to have an effective system of solidarity and responsibility which implies that upon arrival on European soil, registration of persons can be made, asylum applications, if necessary, very quickly examined, deportations executed when the arrivals are not eligible for asylum and this means, both intergovernmentalally and on the a series of very concrete developments that we wish to promote together and an accelerated revision of the Dublin Regulation which is also a project on which we have common views.

On this subject, we therefore need, as you understand it, both more sovereignty and therefore the capacity to protect our common borders and more unity, that is to say mechanisms of solidarity, at the same time. outside our borders and within our borders.

It is exactly the same philosophy that has fueled our debates and our response in economic matters. If we look at the current economic situation of the euro area, we lack sovereignty, solidarity and unity. We are being jostled by the unilateral decisions of our American partners and allies in trade. We are too often divided and we have taken a lot longer than other regions, like the United States, to get out of the 2008-2010 crisis. We must therefore find, in particular at the level of the euro area, but also at the level of the whole of the European Union, the mechanisms here too of greater sovereignty and greater unity.

Sovereignty, it goes through a single coordinated response in commercial matters, the one we have consistently brought in these last weeks and that we wish here to remind, reaffirm very clearly and I wish we could to work together and propose to our colleagues a series of mechanisms that will strengthen Europe's financial, economic and commercial sovereignty with its trading partners, its economic interests and its own interests and to cope with all the changes, all the uncertainties and to undergo any extraterritoriality.

But this is also what we want for the euro zone and within the euro zone. Today we are entering a second stage of the life of our single currency. As we can see, we have not succeeded today fully or in making the euro a complete alternative to the dollar and we have experienced it in recent weeks, we must be clear on the statement, nor a monetary area that had sufficient convergence mechanisms, unity, sufficient cement to avoid systemic crises like those we experienced. That is why today we want to seal a major agreement and I, in turn, want to thank our Finance Ministers who have worked on this subject in recent weeks with many discussions and submitted a very ambitious and precise text, but we together with the Chancellor, decided to move forward to open a new page of the euro area and our common organization and we will have to work in the coming days and weeks with all our partners in the euro area and we will have to complete obviously in the coming months this work. And for me, it is based around several objectives and several instruments.

First of all, a goal of stability that Chancellor MERKEL immediately recalled. We want to be able to revise our instruments so that when a country is faced with an asymmetrical shock, there may be an aid mechanism or when its financial system is jostled, there may be a mechanism of stability and solidarity . It is in this that we wished to advance on a reform of the European Stability Mechanism so that there is a new financing instrument in this matter and that we have also wished to advance together on the establishment for our banking union of 'a safety net in good French "backstop", which can respond in time and in the manner defined by our ministers to the challenge of financial stability.

And so, as you can see, through both the European Stability Mechanism and the safety net that complements the banking union, we respond, it seems to me, in a credible way to the challenge of economic stability and stability. within the euro area. And so it is up to us now to continue the work but this decision, which was not acquired a few months ago, is a major breakthrough that we need and which would have solved a few years ago much faster and much more more strongly the beginning of the financial crisis that the euro zone has experienced.

Then we agreed on the creation of a euro area budget with a function of convergence and investment between the economies of the euro area. It will be a real budget with annual revenue and expenditure, decisions by the euro area states and execution of the expenditure by the European Commission. We will have to work together with our partners on, of course, the topics of growth rate, governance in the framework of what we have just approved and, as the Chancellor reminded us, we wish to be able to start this budget of the euro area in the next budget, in the next financial perspective and therefore that both can start in 2021.

This reform, this finalization of the banking union, this reform of the European Stability Mechanism with a real function of macro-economic stabilization, this creation of a budget of the euro zone are important reforms on which we worked a lot together and which are a political commitment that we take together which will, as Angela MERKEL pointed out at the moment, assume, on the one hand, technical work at the ministerial level until the end of the year; then, probably the following year, a chosen moment, treaty changes that are essential if we want to move in this direction and an entry into force for the reform of the European Stability Mechanism and the budget in 2021.

Never since almost 10 years that one talks about it a Franco-German agreement had been found on the budget of the euro area. There is still a lot of work, a lot of technical questions and it is obvious that we can not purge them in a few hours or even a few weeks of discussion, but what is certain is that we can not solve them. there is no first and foremost a political agreement, a common vision to respond to contemporary challenges and this one, we assert today very strongly and very clearly through this work. And so, in terms of security, defense and migration, as well as in economic and financial matters, we respond to contemporary challenges with greater European sovereignty, more unity and solidarity, and a very strong convergence of views between our two countries. country and a willingness to convince our partners to move forward with us on this line.

The Chancellor also reminded us of the importance in the work of our ministers of what has been decided on space, breakthrough innovation and in particular artificial intelligence, climate with carbon neutrality in 2050, the project of European universities that we make concrete together and strong commitments in terms of fiscal convergence which was also a project stuck for almost 10 years where we decide together and bring to the European level an ambitious project of fiscal convergence for the taxation of our societies which is, I believe, a very strong element and a desire to arrive this year at the European level, an agreement on the taxation of digital.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, what I wanted to recall here. To thank the Chancellor again, dear Angela, for her invitation and all the work that has been done and tell her that, like her, I very deeply believe that it is in these times that we have to decide, it will be without doubt about these decisions that we will have to be judged and that I am delighted that we have been able to decide together looking at the future.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is a translation. Please accept our apologies should the grammar and / or sentence structure not be perfect.