The French president has long called on Europe to seek more “strategic autonomy” and become less reliant on the United States, especially when it comes to European defense — a push has times excluded the U.K.
But Macron’s call for Europe to “derisk” may have fallen on deaf ears in Westminster, with the U.K. still firmly attached to the special relationship with Washington.
“We need to derisk our society and economies … We need to derisk excessive dependencies towards the U.S. and China,” he told lawmakers. Macron, however, added that he didn’t put China and the United States in the same basket.
Macron spoke at Westminster after he and his wife Brigitte were earlier welcomed to Windsor by the King and Queen, where they led a carriage procession and had lunch in Windsor Castle. Macron’s trip is the first state visit since King Charles took the throne, and both the palace and Downing Street have rolled out the red carpet.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has addressed the U.K. parliament twice despite not being afforded a full state visit, while Donald Trump did not give a speech at Westminster during his 2019 state visit.
Macron used the address to underline his commitment to the “coalition of the willing,” the initiative spearheaded by the U.K. and France to protect any Ukrainian ceasefire, which the French president described in his speech as a “signal that Europeans will never abandon Ukraine.”