“[Macron] repeatedly and correctly speaks of our pursuit of European sovereignty,” Wadephul told German public radio in an interview on Monday. “Anyone who talks about this must act accordingly in their own country. Unfortunately, efforts in the French Republic have so far been insufficient to achieve this.”
Wadephul called on Paris to abandon calls for eurobonds, or a joint EU borrowing scheme, in order to finance defense spending. Instead, the French government needs to find cuts in other areas to create fiscal room, the German foreign minister argued.
“We therefore call on France to do what we are doing here, with difficult discussions, to create investment capacity, including in the social sector, to take one or two austerity measures, to make savings in other areas too, in order to have the breathing space needed to achieve the vitally important goal of European defense capability,” Wadephul said.
Wadephul said the same lesson applies to all European countries and urged them to implement NATO’s defense spending target of 5 percent of gross domestic product by 2035, as agreed last year. “Anyone talking about independence from the U.S. today needs to do their homework first. And Europe still has a lot of work to do in this regard.”
While tensions between Macron and Merz over spending and defense are not new, Wadephul’s unsolicited advice on how the French should spend was not well received in Paris.
“I would like to recall the facts. In 2017, France increased its defense budget. Since then, that budget has doubled,” a French economy ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with government practice, said in response to Wadephul’s comments. “We are convinced that strong Franco-German ambition is absolutely necessary for European defense.”