STRASBOURG--French President Emmanuel Macron urged Europeans on Tuesday to halt a retreat into national antagonisms and rebuild the European Union as a bulwark for liberal democracy against a disorderly and dangerous world.
Addressing the European Parliament, he won applause from lawmakers after condemning the rise of "illiberal democracies" even within the EU and portraying a "Europe that protects" people. Dozens of nationalist MEPs sat in silence, however.
Macron noted he was too young to have known the wars that preceded the EU but his family and northern French home region had seen "every blood letting". Echoing the language of historians about Europe's slide into war a century ago, he said he would not belong to another "generation of sleepwalkers" and let the EU wither in what he called an atmosphere of "civil war".
Selfish nationalism was gaining ground, Macron warned. But it was a "game of fools" to halt or reverse sharing sovereignty among EU states in the face of challenges ranging from climate change and mass migration to the growing power of multinational corporations and authoritarian states -- a reference to China and Russia, among others. Europe's ally the United States was, he lamented, also being "tempted by unilateralism".
"We need a sovereignty that is stronger than just our own, which complements but does not replace it," Macron said in Strasbourg, a French frontier city which has become a symbol of Franco-German reconciliation after centuries as a prize of war.
The pro-EU rhetoric of his first year in office has stirred enthusiasm from some. "The real France is back," declared Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU chief executive, after Macron spoke. But the French leader faces a struggle to persuade German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and especially her more conservative supporters, to throw their weight behind grand European designs from Paris.
Macron tackled critics among his National Front opponents at home and European leaders such as newly re-elected Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, rejecting visions of illiberal democracy, hostile to immigration and intolerant of criticism. "In the face of authoritarianism, the response is not authoritarian democracy but the authority of democracy," Macron said. He went on to describe nationalism as a dead end.
"We must hear the anger of Europe's peoples today," he said. "They need a new project. Those who trade on that anger are risking nationalisms tearing Europe apart."
