Mr President, sir
Mr Prime Minister
ladies and gentlemen, Ministers
My dear Colleagues
Europe is at a critical juncture in its history. The American shield hides, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened.
Washington became the court of Nero, an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers, and a ketamine buffoon charged with purging the civil service.
It is a drama for the free world, but it is first and foremost a drama for the United States. Trump's message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, that he will impose more tariffs on you than on his enemies and threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that are invading you.
The king of the deal is showing what the art of the deal is on his stomach. He thinks he will intimidate China by lying down before Putin, but Xi Jinping, in the face of such a shipwreck, is no doubt speeding up preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.
Never in history has a president of the United States capitulated to the enemy. No one has ever supported an aggressor against an ally. Never has anyone trampled on the American Constitution, taken so many illegal decrees, dismissed judges who could prevent it, suddenly sacked the military staff, weakened all counter-powers and took control of social networks.
It is not an illiberal drift, it is a beginning of confiscation of democracy. Let us remember that it took only a month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution.
I have confidence in the strength of American democracy and the country is already protesting. But in a month, Trump has done more harm to America than in four years of his last presidency. We were at war with a dictator, we are now fighting against a dictator backed by a traitor.
Eight days ago, just as Trump was passing his hand behind Macron's back in the White House, the United States was voting at the UN with Russia and North Korea against Europeans demanding the departure of Russian troops.
Two days later, in the oval office, the military service stash gave lessons in morality and strategy to the war hero Zelensky before firing him as a groomsman by ordering him to submit or resign.
That night, he took another step into infamy by stopping the delivery of weapons yet promised. What to do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple: face it.
And first of all, don't be wrong. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Baltics, Georgia and Moldova are already on the list. Putin's goal is the return to Yalta where half of the continent was ceded to Stalin.
The countries of the South are waiting for the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe or whether they are now free to trample on it.
What Putin wants is an end to the order put in place by the United States and its allies 80 years ago, with the first principle being a ban on the acquisition of territory by force.
This idea is at the very source of the UN, where today the Americans vote in favor of the aggressor and against the aggressor, because the Trumpian vision coincides with that of Putin: a return to spheres of influence, the great powers dictating the fate of small countries.
To me Greenland, Panama and Canada, to you Ukraine, the Baltics and Eastern Europe, to him Taiwan and the China Sea.
This is called, in the evenings of the oligarchs of the Gulf of Mar-a-Lago, "diplomatic realism".
So we are alone. But the discourse that Putin cannot be resisted is false. Contrary to Kremlin propaganda, Russia is doing badly. In three years, the so-called second army of the world managed to grab only crumbs from a country three times less populated.
Interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange and gold reserves, the demographic collapse show that it is on the brink of collapse. The American boost to Putin is the biggest strategic mistake ever made in a war.
The shock is violent, but it has a virtue. Europeans are emerging from denial. They understood in one day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands and that they have three imperatives.
Accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for American cowardice, for it to hold, and of course to impose its presence and that of Europe in any negotiation.
It'll cost expensive. We will have to end the taboo of the use of frozen Russian assets. It will be necessary to circumvent Moscow's accomplices within Europe by a coalition of the only voluntary countries, with of course the United Kingdom.
Second, demand that any agreement be accompanied by the return of kidnapped children, prisoners and absolute security guarantees. After Budapest, Georgia and Minsk, we know what the agreements with Putin are worth. These guarantees require sufficient military force to prevent further invasion.
Finally, and this is the most urgent, because this is what will take the most time, it would be necessary to build the neglected European defense, in favor of the American umbrella since 1945 and scuttled since the fall of the Berlin wall.
C'est une tâche herculéenne, mais c'est sur sa réussite ou son échec que seront jugés dans les livres d'Histoire les dirigeants de l'Europe démocratique d'aujourd'hui.
Friedrich Merz vient de déclarer que l'Europe a besoin de sa propre alliance militaire. C'est reconnaître que la France avait raison depuis des décennies en plaidant pour une autonomie stratégique.
Il reste à la construire. Il faudra investir massivement, renforcer le Fonds européen de défense hors des critères d'endettement de Maastricht, harmoniser les systèmes d'armes et de munitions, accélérer l'entrée dans l'Union de l'Ukraine, qui est aujourd'hui la première armée européenne, repenser la place et les conditions de la dissuasion nucléaire à partir des capacités françaises et britanniques, relancer les programmes de boucliers antimissiles et de satellites.
Le plan annoncé hier par Ursula von der Leyen est un très bon point de départ. Et il faudra beaucoup plus.
L'Europe ne redeviendra une puissance militaire qu'en redevenant une puissance industrielle. En un mot, il faudra appliquer le rapport Draghi. Pour de bon.
Mais le vrai réarmement de l'Europe, c'est son réarmement moral.
Nous devons convaincre l'opinion face Ă la lassitude et Ă la peur de la guerre, et surtout face aux comparses de Poutine, l'extrĂŞme droite et l'extrĂŞme gauche.
Ils ont encore plaidé hier à l'Assemblée nationale, Monsieur le Premier ministre, devant vous, contre l'unité européenne, contre la défense européenne.
Ils disent vouloir la paix. Ce que ni eux ni Trump ne disent, c'est que leur paix, c'est la capitulation, la paix de la défaite, le remplacement de de Gaulle Zelensky par un Pétain ukrainien à la botte de Poutine.
La paix des collabos qui ont refusé depuis trois ans toute aide aux Ukrainiens.
Est-ce la fin de l'Alliance Atlantique ? Le risque est grand. Mais depuis quelques jours, l'humiliation publique de Zelensky et toutes les décisions folles prises depuis un mois ont fini par faire réagir les Américains.
Polls are in decline. Republican elected officials are greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News is critical.
Trumpists are no longer in majesty. They control the executive, Parliament, Supreme Court and social media.
But in American history, the supporters of freedom have always won. They start to raise their heads.
The fate of Ukraine lies in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to defend democracy, and here on our ability to unite Europeans, to find the means of their common defence, and to rebuild Europe as the power it once was in history and that it hesitates to become again.
Our parents have defeated fascism and communism at the cost of all the sacrifices.
The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the XXIst century.
Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.