Join French President Emmanuel Macron’s special address at WEF Annual Meeting 2026 in Davos, sharing France’s perspectives on global dialogue, economic resilience and international partnerships.
In a Davos special address moderated by BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, French President Emmanuel Macron argued the world is entering a “time of instability” marked by “a shift towards a world without rules,” weakened multilateral institutions, and intensifying economic coercion. He warned that, absent collective governance, cooperation is replaced by “relentless competition” from both the United States—via tariffs and trade demands that “aim to weaken and subordinate Europe”—and China, where “massive excess capacities” distort markets.
Macron’s prescription combined “more sovereignty and more autonomy for the Europeans” with “efficient multilateralism.” As France assumes the G7 presidency, he said the priority is correcting global imbalances—“American overconsumption, Chinese underconsumption and overinvestment, and European underinvestment”—through shared diagnosis and concrete commitments.
For Europe, he proposed three pillars: protection, simplification, and investment. “Protection doesn’t mean protectionism,” he said, but Europe must enforce a level playing field, build “European preference,” and strengthen trade-defense tools. He urged rapid deregulation where rules “desynchronize” Europe and pressed for a Capital Markets Union to mobilize Europe’s savings into innovation, especially AI, green tech, and defense. His closing message: reject “new imperialism,” focus on “peace, prosperity and decarbonisation,” and “not waste time with crazy ideas.”
I'm going to get started. Welcome, everybody. Mr. president, welcome. I've been visiting France for more than 50 years. I know I don't look it, but truly so. And over that time, I've been passionate. Passionate about visiting France, understanding it, learning about it, learning from it. But most mostly I've been passionate about the debates we have related to the French economy and importantly, the French is to the future of France. What's striking to me about these debates, the debates have actually changed and the debates have changed over the last decade. Today, I think there's a broad agreement around one single idea that economic growth matters. Economic growth, as it broadens, reduces polarization. I think that sounds obvious now about the need for economic growth. But not so long ago, it was still an open question whether competitiveness would truly sit at the center of France's economic vision. I think that question has been answered. And President Emmanuel Macron has been the key man driving that shift and answering that question. In fact, you could make an argument that no French leader has led his country at a more pivotal time since World War two. From the onset, President Macron has argued that France must strengthen itself, it must strengthen its defense. It must renew itself in its capacity to innovate, but also importantly and maybe more importantly, today than ever before, and remain engaged in the world. That perspective has defined his presidency and is one that is helping to shape the conversation, the needed conversation about Europe's future. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming the president of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron.
Thank you very much for your words, Your Majesties. Distinguished heads of state 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, 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 few minutes time. But it's clear that we are we are reaching a time of of instability, of unbalances, both from the security and defense point of view and 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, and conflict has become normalized hybrid expanding into new domains, 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 towards a world without effective collective governance, and where multilateralism is weakened by a power that obstructed or torn 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 as leverage against territorial sovereignty and competition from China, where massive excess capacities are distortive practices threaten to overwhelm entire industrial and commercial sectors. Export control has become more dangerous, new tools destabilizing global trade and the international system. And the answer in order to fix this issue is more cooperation. And building new approaches. And it's clearly building more economic sovereignty and strategic economy, especially for the Europeans, which is, for me, the core answer in this context. I want to exclude two approaches. The first approach would be to, I would say, to passively accept the law of the strongest, leading to vasodilation and block politics. I think accepting a sort of new colonial approach doesn't make sense. And all the head of state and government and business leaders, which would be too complacent with such an approach, will take a huge responsibility. The second will be to adopt a purely moral posture, limiting ourselves to commentary. That path would condemn us to marginalization and powerlessness. Faced with a brutal decision of the world, France and Europe must defend and effective multilateralism because it serves our interests and those of all who refuse to submit to the rule of force. And for me, the two answers are on one side more sovereignty and more autonomy for the Europeans on the other side, and efficient multilateralism to deliver results through cooperation. Obviously, France and Europe are attached to national sovereignty and independence, to the United Nations and to its charter. And it's not an old fashioned way to live multilateralism. It's just not to totally forget what we learned from the Second World War and remain committed to cooperation. And this is also because of those principles that we have decided to join the mutual exercise in Greenland without threatening anyone, but just supporting and ally and another European country, Denmark, facing this order and this new situation. This year, France holds the G7 presidency with a clear ambition to restore the G7 as a forum for frank dialogue among major economies and for collective and cooperative solutions. Trade wars, protectionist escalation races towards overproduction will only produce losers. This is why addressing global economic imbalances is our key priority. And if we look at the situation, the current imbalances are due to some key phenomena and we all have to deliver our own agenda. This includes American overconsumption, Chinese underconsumption and overinvestment, and European underinvestment and lack of competitiveness. And this imbalances are also reflected in development gaps, by the way, and we can no longer settle for aid that neither delivers sufficient results nor enables countries to escape poverty. So our objective through the G7 is to demonstrate that the world's major powers are still capable of reaching a shared diagnosis of the global economy and committing to concrete actions. Cooperating is not. Blaming, is not about blaming others. It is about assuming one share of responsibility and contributing to solutions. So the objective of this G7 will be to build this framework of cooperation in order to fix the roots of these imbalances and restore efficient convergence and cooperation through multilateral frameworks. And the other objective is as well, to build bridges and more cooperations with the emerging countries, the BRICs and the G20. Because the fragmentation of this world will not make sense here. This point is, for, I would say, the global agenda and how the G7 agenda. On the other side, we have the European answer. And for me, Europe clearly has to fix its key issues a lack of growth, the lack of GDP per capita growth and the three pillars of our strategy in order to deliver more sovereignty, more efficiency and more growth, would be based on protection, simplification and investment. Because the diagnosis is well known, European competitiveness still lags behind that of the US and in the global order. Facing precisely the Chinese approach, we have to react. So first protection. Protection doesn't mean protectionism, but today's Europeans are too naive. This is the unique market open to everybody without checking level playing field. Nobody can access the Chinese market as people are accessing the European market for sure. But even if you take the US and a lot of other countries, the level of protection does exist for investment and trade, and the Europeans are the only one not to protect their own companies and their own markets. When the other countries doesn't respect level playing field. This is why we have to be much more realistic if we want to protect our chemical industry, our industry, from the automotive sectors to a lot of others, because they are being literally killed by the lack of respect of a normal framework and a level playing field. Europe has very strong tools now, and we have to use them when we are not respected and when the rule of the game are not respected. By the way, the anti-corruption mechanism is a powerful instrument and we should not hesitate to deploy it in today's tough environment. We must also advance the principle of European preference. There is a North American preference in your market. There is no European preference. Today we are progressively creating it. And in the latest documents and decisions taken by the decisions, we, we we do have the first examples of that. But this is extremely good. And we are currently aligning closely with Germany to deliver an ambitious and simple framework. And this is a decisive project. And I count on the European Commission to present the proposal as well. By early 2026, with the highest possible level of ambition in order to deliver, I would say, across the different sectors, the principle of European preference. This is a necessity. We must act on imports as well. Regarding this protection issue and in the context of escalating trade tensions and Asian overcapacities, Europe must strengthen its trade. Defence instruments, including measures to enforce regulatory standards, and we must improve the quality and added value of foreign direct investments targeting projects with strong export potential. And this is core for the rebalancing with China. China is welcome, but what we need is more Chinese foreign direct investment in Europe in some key sectors to contribute to our growth, to transfer some technologies, and not just to export towards Europe, some devices or produces or products which sometimes don't have the same standards or are are much more subsidized, are the ones being produced in Europe. It's not being protectionist, it's just restoring this level playing field and protecting our industry. So from several safeguard clauses to moral clauses to European preferences and incentives for more fdis, this strategy is absolutely key. And in parallel, protecting our economies will also require a resilient strategy on both import and export to de-risk supply chains, particularly for raw materials or rare earth semiconductors chips, and to diversify our trade partners. The second pillar of the European economy and European strategy should be simplification. And when I speak about simplification, we started with CSD, CS, triple D, and we have to do much more on different sectors. And we did it during the past few weeks on automotive. And we have to do it on chemical, digital, AI, banking and so on. And the core of this simplification is sometimes to get rid of some recent regulations when they desynchronize in a certain way, the European Union in comparison with the rest of the world. But we have as well to accelerate the deepening of the single market on all these sectors. The 450 million inhabitants and consumers markets should be the domestic market of all the EU companies. It is not yet the case. The case as long as you have complexities. In doing so, we must ensure respect, technological neutrality and non-discrimination within the European Union. This is another pillar, another point of simplification, neutral approach in terms of technology and non-discrimination. We discriminate during such a long time between the different source of energies is it's counterproductive for the Europeans themselves. Companies have a role to play, and we must we must act and you must act. And clearly you must help identify and concretely help us to simplify where it is needed. But for me, this agenda of simplification is not a matter of discussion, but just implementation speed and scale. The third pillar of the European strategy for more competitiveness and more autonomy is based on investment and innovation. We have to invest much more if there is a GDP per capita so different between the US and Europe, 65% to 70% of the explanation is due to the difference in terms of innovation. And the US was much more innovative because of public and private investment. So in our budget for the the months to come, because we will negotiate during the years this year in Europe, we have to invest much more money in the critical sectors where innovation will be made AI, green tech. But as all defence and security, the size of our common budget is not the right one. We have to invest much more money in order to be much more credible and accelerate this innovation agenda. But at the same time, if you look at the situation, we don't have sufficient private investment, and this is one of the main difference. We do have the savings as the Europeans, much more than the US, by the way, but this saving is over invested. In bonds and sometimes in equities but outside Europe. So this is why the top priority should be securitisation programme. It is prepared. We have to accelerate the implementation, the implementation and second capital market union precisely in order to have more integration and simplification, but to have an efficient capital market, union in order to invest much more money and use our savings to be invested on innovation and equity in Europe. This agenda for me is our top priority, both the global and the European one, and it is to be implemented in the months to come because everything is about acceleration and France is committed to deliver this agenda. We work very closely with our key partners and at the same time, our objective for France is to stabilise our results and our our macro approach and to remain the highly attractive country we are. We've been the most attractive country of Europe during the past six years, and to consolidate our deep structural reforms and our key advantage, and on top of the business framework we have, I want here to insist on the fact that we have a competitive, stable, low carbon electricity supply. We exported last year 90 terawatt hours of electricity and low carbon one. Based on our nuclear model. We have world class innovation and research capabilities, and we will improve them. And we have one of the most vivid and active ecosystem in AI, quantum computing, energy transition, etc., etc. and a lot of startups and unicorns and large caps of these sectors are with me in my delegation today. And on top of that, let me insist and I will stop here on the fact that we have a high quality infrastructure and large market with strong purchasing power, and we have a place where rule of law and predictability is still the rule of the game. And my guess is that it is largely underpriced by the market and beyond what you can do in terms of investment, what you can do in terms of strong ambitions, having a place like Europe, which sometimes is too slow for sure and needs to be reformed for sure, but which is predictable, loyal, and when? Where you know that the rule of the game is just the rule of law, it's a good place. And I think this is a good place for today and for tomorrow. So we will be committed during 2026 to to try to deliver this global agenda in order to fix global imbalances through more cooperation. And we will do our best in order to have a stronger Europe, much stronger and more autonomous, based on the the the pillars I just mentioned and based as well. And we can revert in the dialogue. But on more investment and commitments on defence and security, because we have to invest much more on invest much more because we do believe. And here in the epicentre of this continent, we do believe that we need more growth, we need more stability in this world. But we do prefer respect to bullies. We do prefer science to polytheism, and we do prefer rule of law to brutality. You're welcome in Europe, and you are more than welcome to France.
What I'd really like to ask you is, how was your last few days been? But. Importantly, though, you framed out a, an economic direction for France and for Europe. If you had to prioritize to to transform France and Europe as fast as possible, you close saying, yes, we are slow. Yes. But what what are the what can we do right now to really accelerate it, to broaden the economies across Europe, that we have more participants? Is there any one silver bullet that you could do to really accelerate that type of growth?
I don't think there is one silver bullet, but I think, on the very short run, given the situation on some, some critical sectors, I think the European preference is a necessity because we are synchronized with the others. And the second one is clearly a big bunch of simplification. The 28th regime, which is being prepared by the Commission and, and, and the deepening of the single market is key. And this is why I insisted on capital market union. I think if we deliver European preference and capital market union, here are two game changers.
Well, you know, I've been talking about the capital market union in Europe as one of the major hindrances compared to the US. And so yes, but I do believe as we witnessed starting last year and we're starting to see it accelerate this year, you're starting to see more international flows coming back to Europe. And so that is beginning. And so I do believe that will accelerate. But if there is but in terms of priorities, if you had to tell the commission, what should they be more swift in terms of transforming Europe faster so it can compete with the US, compete with Europe and exceed China and Europe, China and the US?
Look, I think this is the discussion we have clearly with the Commission. We will have an informal summit in in February focused on this topic. Everything was largely, drafted by both Letta and Draghi's reports and is well known. I think the difference is that Draghi was before China surpluses vis a vis Europe. I mean, we should not underestimate the fact that 2025, for the very first time, China has such a such a surplus vis a vis the rest of the one third vis a vis the US, one third Europe, one third the rest of the world.
There was $1 trillion. It was bigger than any other time.
Yeah. And for the first time, the deficit between Germany and China was a trade deficit for Germany. And this is a game changer for Europe. So this is why clearly for me, we have to fix this issue. And secondly it's about the tariffs. So if I have to tell you what could change the game and our approach for all of us in, in the in the year to come, for me it would be a bunch of simplification with all this omnibus package for the commission sector by sector, European Preference Capital Markets Union and dismantling of the tariff between US and Europe. Because in such a context, what doesn't make sense is to have tariffs between allies. Right? We have to fix the war in Ukraine. We have to help the Ukrainians to resist and find a sustainable peace. We have to fix prosperity in democracies. I mean, it doesn't make sense to have tariffs and be divided and even to threaten now with additional tariffs we can use. I mean, the crazy things is that we can be put in a situation to use to use the anti-corruption mechanism for the very first time vis a vis the US if they put additional tithes. Can you imagine that? This is crazy. This is I mean, I do regret that, but this is a consequence of just unpredictability and useless aggressivity. So what we have to do is to remain very calm, all of us. We have such an agenda with so many opportunities and so many challenges. So let's be focused on peace in Europe. Everybody should be focused to help the Ukrainians to have a sustainable peace level playing field and fixing the issues and this imbalances with China, because it's an issue for the Europeans and the Americans. And third, let's be focused on more competitiveness in Europe and this big acceleration, full stop.
Throughout the sessions today. And I think during the week, AI is going to be the dominant conversation. And the question is how does AI develop in Europe? I know there was one conversation already being held on that. What is your vision of AI for France specifically?
Look, we are strong believer in one year ago we we organized this AI summit in Paris. And and we are one of the most vibrant ecosystem in Europe. We really believe and we are committed on AI because we, we we really think that this is a game changer, not just in terms of productivity precisely and, and, and growth, but, I mean, because this is a true revolution, we have assets. In order to do so.
You have a grid and you have power to.
We have power. at a grid and low carbon energy. No need to have new I mean coal plants and, and or oil production in order to deliver the capacities for AI. I mean, this is important. We have 90 terawatt hours available for more AI activities. We have a national grid super Pilotable. Third, we have we have available capacities for more data centers and computing capacities. And we are delivering the agenda announced one year ago. So we are building these capacities. And Europe was lagging behind the US and others. On this field we have tenants, very good data scientists, mathematicians and so on, and we are increasing our training programs and our capacities. And we have several hubs being identified, and we have a critical ecosystem.
Right.
With LLM champions. But as well we have, start up on AI and quantum, I don't forget them, which are extremely present in all these different fields. One of the best evidence of the attractiveness and, and this vibrant ecosystem is that Yann LeCun decides, I mean, when he decided to leave meta and set up his own company, established it in France, right, a few weeks ago, which is, for me, a good.
Big win.
A big win, and we will do our best to help him to work. This is a global company, but incorporated in France and established in France with this talents. So we have all these assets. But what is important for me now is to invest to help all the startups and the companies in this sector to do much more and to increase, but to do, to do my best in order to make sure that their domestic market is EU market and not just the French one. Right. And when we speak about strengthening the single market, this is this point. And this is a game changer because it means your domestic market is not just 68 million inhabitants but 450 million. It's super important.
And it's important for Europe to have that unified grid which does not have yet.
Exactly.
So for the remaining time, is there any one message that you really want to you want to push over the course of your remaining term that really will resonate, not just resonate for France, but resonate for the for the world?
Look, I really believe that we are in a, in this very challenging times. And you mentioned some of these challenges in your speech. I did in mind. And and unhappily, we were even not totally I mean, complete, and at the same time, we see the level of investment in this world and the current environment and the ongoing revolution. This level of investment is has no comparison with what happened during the past years, not to say decades. So my, my, my main message would be let's not be shy, let's let's not be divided. Let's not accept a global order which will be decided by those who claim to have the, I would say, the bigger voice or the bigger stick or the bigger one. I don't know, but let's focus. Or just common interests and common challenges. We know what we have to fix growth, peace, climate. And we should not forget climate in this current agenda. We want peace. We want growth. We want climate and investment. Innovation. Everything should be dedicated to fix these three issues. And in order to fix these three issues, let's focus on the key investments, the key innovation. But our ability to cooperate as well. And and let's be clear, Davos was founded for restoring a global discussion, having a global discussion between business leaders, but as well governments and so on. A global discussion is a discussion where everybody is respected and where you provide an improvement and a way forward for every place and every people in this world. This is the only way to make it sustainable. And I think this is the right way to do. And even if this is less present in the global debate today, we should focus much more on this approach, more cooperation, and let's focus on our key challenge to deliver peace, prosperity and decarbonisation of our economies. For our fellow citizens, this is our duty as business leaders, as head of state governments, and we have everything in order to deliver this agenda. Just let's be coordinated. Let's not waste time with crazy ideas. Let's not open Pandora's box or new topics. And it's not a time for new imperialism or new colonialism. This is a time of cooperation. In order to fix this, global challenges for our fellow citizens. Full stop.
We ran out of time. I want to thank the president of the Republic of France, Emmanuel Macron, for his wisdom, but most importantly, for your humanity and your leadership.
Thank you Danny, thank you. I appreciate thank you.
What?
Emmanuel.