Mr. President,
Prime Minister,
Ministers,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Colleagues,
Europe is at a critical turning point in its history. The American shield is faltering, Ukraine risks being abandoned, and Russia is strengthening. Washington has become Nero’s court, with an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers, and a ketamine-fueled jester in charge of purging the civil service. This is a tragedy for the free world, but first and foremost for the United States.
Trump’s message is clear: there is no point in being his ally, for he will not defend you. He will impose higher tariffs on you than on his enemies, threaten to seize your territories, while supporting the dictatorships that invade you. The king of the deal shows what the art of the deal looks like in reverse. He thinks he can intimidate China by bowing down to Putin, but in the face of such a debacle, China is probably accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.
Never in history has a U.S. president capitulated to the enemy, supported an aggressor against an ally, or trampled on the U.S. Constitution as Trump has done. He has issued illegal decrees, revoked judges, dismissed the military staff, weakened all checks and balances, and taken control of social networks. This is not an illiberal drift; it is the beginning of the confiscation of democracy.
Eight days ago, as Trump patted Macron on the back at the White House, the United States voted at the UN with Russia and North Korea against the Europeans, demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops. Two days later, in the Oval Office, the military draft dodger lectured war hero Zelensky on morality and strategy before dismissing him like a stable boy, ordering him to submit or resign. Tonight, he took another step into infamy by stopping the delivery of promised weapons.
What to do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple: stand firm. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Netherlands, Georgia, and Moldova are already on the list. Putin’s goal is a return to Yalta, where half 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 it.
Putin wants the end of the order established by the United States and its allies 80 years ago, with the first principle being the prohibition of acquiring territories by force. This idea is at the very heart of the UN, where today the Americans vote in favor of the aggressor and against the victim, because the Trumpian vision coincides with that of Putin: a return to spheres of influence, with great powers dictating the fate of small countries.
We are therefore alone, but the notion that we cannot resist Putin is false. Contrary to Kremlin propaganda, Russia is in trouble. The so-called second-strongest army in the world has managed to grab only crumbs of a country three times less populated. Interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange and gold reserves, and demographic decline show that it is on the brink of the abyss. The American boost to Putin is the greatest strategic mistake ever made during a war.
The shock is violent, but it has one virtue: Europeans are coming out of denial. They understood in one day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands. They have three imperatives: accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American withdrawal, demand that any agreement be accompanied by the return of kidnapped children, prisoners, and absolute security guarantees, and finally, build European defense, neglected in favor of the American umbrella since 1945.
It is a Herculean task, but it is on its success or failure that the leaders of today’s democratic Europe will be judged in the history books. Friedrich Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. It remains to be built. We will need to invest massively, strengthen the European Defense Fund, harmonize weapons and ammunition systems, accelerate Ukraine’s entry into the Union, rethink the place and conditions of nuclear deterrence, and relaunch missile defense and satellite programs.
The plan announced yesterday by Ursula von der Leyen is a very good starting point, but much more will be needed. Europe will only become a military power again by becoming an industrial power. In a word, we must truly implement the Draghi report. But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament. We must convince public opinion in the face of war-weariness and fear, and especially in the face of Putin’s accomplices, the far right and the far left, who argue against European unity and defense.
They claim to want peace, but their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of de Gaulle Zelensky with a Ukrainian Pétain at Putin’s beck and call. The peace of the collaborators who have refused any aid to the Ukrainians for three years. Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? The risk is great, but in recent days, the public humiliation of Zelensky and all the crazy decisions made in the past month have finally caused the Americans to react.
Polls are plummeting, Republican elected officials are being booed in their districts, even Fox News is becoming critical. The Trumpists are no longer in the majority. They control the executive, Parliament, the Supreme Court, and social networks, but in American history, the advocates of freedom have always prevailed. They are beginning to raise their heads.
The fate of Ukraine is being decided 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 the Europeans, to find the means for their common defense, and to make Europe once again the power it once was in history and which it hesitates to become again. Our parents defeated fascism and communism at the cost of all sacrifices. The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century.
Long live free Ukraine! Long live democratic Europe!
[Applause]