Sorry, Emmanuel! Macron plot to force EU 'model' on NATO unravels: 'We haven't forgotten!'

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    The French President gloated about the EU having the ambition to be a “model” for other NATO nations on how to recover post-coronavirus pandemic. He tweeted: “It is an important day for NATO. Among allies, we meet in Brussels.

    “My call is for coherence: let us clearly reaffirm the values ​​that unite us, the rules and principles that are the basis and make up the strength of our Alliance.

    “Europe has a vocation to play a role of balancing power in the world after, to carry its model, its voice, its method, reinforced by the ordeal of the pandemic.

    “This will be at the heart of the French Presidency of the European Union that we will exercise in the coming months.”

    But Mr Macron’s bid to show off before other NATO leaders outside the EU backfired spectacularly.

    One Twitter user replied: “Well it’s off to a bad start all the other nations don’t give a damn about Europe and are using Europe and it doesn’t say anything. It’s so slow in making decisions that it doesn’t want to work.”

    And another: “To play a role in the world when it is not playing its role for its countries? Its model?

    “Is it to impose from above without being able to control the top? Impose a fixed currency without taking into account the differences in the productivity of industrial fabrics? Print Debt? No thanks!”

    Someone else reminded the French President of the shambles and the lack of solidarity shown by France and other member states to Italy at the beginning of the pandemic.

    They said: “Sorry but I still haven’t forgotten how Europe shone with its absence when Italy was at its worst during the first wave … Europe has a failing constitution for now.”

    Others picked on the EU recovery model.

    READ MORE: Boris accused of ‘poisoning’ G7 by French media – after Macron blunder

    At the Summit, US President Joe Biden told fellow NATO leaders the defence of Europe, Turkey and Canada was a “sacred obligation” for the United States, a marked shift from his predecessor Donald Trump’s threats to withdraw from the military alliance.

    Arriving in Brussels from the weekend’s G7 summit in England, President Biden again sought to rally Western allies to support a US strategy to contain China’s military rise as well as showing unity in the face of Russian aggression.

    “Article Five is a sacred obligation,” Mr Biden said, referring to the transatlantic alliance’s collective defence pledge.

    “I want all Europe to know that the United States is there,” he said after arriving in his black presidential limousine.

    “NATO is critically important to us,” said the US President, who is seeking to mend ties after Trump’s denigration of the nuclear-armed alliance over the past four years and what Trump said were its “delinquent” members.

    Allies are expected to brand China a security risk to the Western alliance for the first time, a day after the Group of Seven rich nations issued a statement on human rights in China and Taiwan that Beijing said slandered its reputation.

    Mr Biden said both Russia and China were not acting “in a way that is consistent with what we had hoped”, referring to Western efforts since the mid-1990s to bring both countries into the fold of liberal democracies.

    Allied leaders are concerned about Russia’s recent military build-up near Ukraine, as well as its covert and cyber attacks to undermine Western states, although Moscow denies any wrongdoing. China is no longer seen as a benign trading partner.

    NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said China’s growing military presence from the Baltics to Africa meant NATO had to be prepared.

    In a reference to ports and telecoms networks, he said: “China is coming closer to us. We see them in cyber space, we see China in Africa, but we also see China investing heavily in our own critical infrastructure.

    “We need to respond together as an alliance.”



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