President Macron has raised the stakes in his push for Europe to become an independent military power with a proposal to extend the French nuclear umbrella to the continent.
The opposition to the left and right of the centrist president voiced outrage at his strongest offer to consider putting France’s nuclear arsenal, consisting of about 300 submarine-launched ballistic missiles and air-launched cruise missiles, at the service of its European neighbours.
Macron’s offer reflected his conversion over the past two years from an advocate of dialogue with Moscow over Ukraine to one of the West’s most ardent voices warning of an existential threat to Europe from Russia.
A “credible European defence” should go beyond the protection already offered by the US-led Nato alliance, Macron said. “French doctrine is that we can use [nuclear arms] when our vital interests are at stake … There is a European dimension in these vital interests,” he told a group of eastern French regional newspapers.
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“I am in favour of opening this debate, which must therefore include missile defence, long-range weapons and nuclear weapons for those who have them or who have American nuclear weapons on their soil. France will keep its specificity, but it is ready to contribute more to the defence of European soil.”
His allusion to countries with nuclear weapons on their soil was aimed at Germany, where US warheads are based. Germany has rejected suggestions made by Macron since 2020 that it should join a “strategic dialogue” on the role of the French deterrent in the continent’s collective security.
With Russia advancing in Ukraine and the looming likelihood of Donald Trump’s re-election as US president, the preference for total reliance on Nato has dwindled in Germany.
Manfred Weber, leader of the centre-right European People’s Party in the European parliament and a member of the Bavarian Christian Social Union, said in January that Europe should take up Macron’s nuclear offer.
Since Brexit France has been the EU’s only nuclear power. Unlike Britain’s deterrent, which is dependent on US technology, Paris has maintained the independence of its French-made nuclear strike force since it was created in the 1960s.
France co-operates with Britain on nuclear issues and also with Nato on nuclear planning. Its force is deemed part of Nato’s overall deterrence.
Jens Stoltenberg, the Nato secretary-general, has warned that calls for Europe to develop a nuclear umbrella could divide the continent from North America. “Nato has a nuclear deterrent, and this has worked for decades,” he said in February. “We should not do anything to undermine that.”
Macron laid out his more muscular stance in a speech at the Sorbonne University in Paris last week as he opened his campaign for the European parliamentary elections in June. He warned that the threat from Russia made it vital that Europe increase preparations for war. “The European pillar of Nato that we are building is essential. But we should build a European defence framework,” he said. “We have to … build a Europe able to show that it is never a vassal of the US.”
Macron’s opponents saw his nuclear overture as a dangerous further step into the military realm after an explosive suggestion he made in February that France and the EU could send troops to help to defend Ukraine.
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François-Xavier Bellamy, leader of the conservative Republicans party in the European elections, said Macron had breached all the rules with “a statement of exceptional gravity that touches on the nerve of French sovereignty”.
The radical left France Unbowed party said that Macron was playing with fire.
For the National Rally, Thierry Mariani, the party’s senior foreign affairs official, who is known for his pro-Russian sentiments, said that Macron was “becoming a danger to the nation”. He added: “After our nuclear weapons, France’s seat at the UN security council will be next to be sold off to the European Union.”
