French President Emmanuel Macron emphasized the importance of European independence on Monday by calling on France’s EU allies to look at a more home-grown air defense strategy in order to avoid becoming over-reliant on defense systems purchased outside of Europe.
“When we talk about air defense, we would be wrong to rush into [increasing] capacity,” Macron said at a news conference in Paris after meeting with defense ministers and other representatives of 20 European countries.
“The question is, first of all, strategic. It consists of knowing the state of the threats, what we can realistically defend, and which strategy we want to pursue,” he continued. “And then, what we, as Europeans, have the capacity to produce and what we must then buy. Because if we have an approach based solely on capacity, we would right away buy what’s available even if it’s not useful—and that generally means buying massive amounts of non-European products.”…