Emmanuel Macron

Thank you very much, Larry, for your words. Your Majesties, distinguished head of states and governments, President Lagarde, ministers, ambassadors, business leaders, ladies and gentlemen, I'm extremely happy to be here, and it's, it's great to be here as the Financial Times would say. And and it's a time of peace, stability, and predictability.

So let's try to address the key challenge of this world in a, in a, in a few minutes' time, but it's clear that we are, we are reaching a time of instability, of imbalances, both from the security and defense point of view and the economic point of view. Look at the situation where we are.

I mean, a shift towards autocracy against democracy, more violence, more than 60 wars in 2024, an absolute record, even if I understood a few of them were fixed. And conflict has become normalized, hybrid, expanding into new demands, space, digital information, cyber, trade, and so on.

It's as well a shift towards a world without rules, where international law is trampled underfoot, and where the only law that seems to matter is that of the strongest, and imperial ambitions are resurfacing. Obviously, the Russian war, the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, which will enter into its fourth year next month, and conflicts continue in the Middle East and across Africa.

This is as well a shift toward a world without effective collective governance, and where multilateralism is weakened by powers that obstruct it or turn away from it and rules are undermined. And I can multiply the examples of, international bodies weakened or left by the key economies.

And when we look at the situation, it's, it's clearly a very concerning time because we are killing the structure where we can fix the situation and the common challenges we have. Without collective governance, cooperation gives way to relentless competition.

Competition from the United States of America through trade agreements that undermine our export interests, demand maximum concession, concessions, and openly aim to weaken and subordinate Europe, combined with an endless accumulation of new tariffs that are fundamentally unacceptable, even more so when they are used so, as leverage against territorial sovereignty. And competition from China, where massive excess capacities or distortive practices threaten to overwhelm entire industrial and commercial sectors.