PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron warned Tuesday that the United States is “gradually turning away” from some of its allies and “breaking free from international rules,” delivering some of his sharpest public criticism yet of Washington’s posture under Donald Trump.
Addressing France’s assembled ambassadors at the Élysée Palace, Macron said Europe must respond with unity and resolve as the global order frays, citing a spate of U.S. actions that have rattled longtime partners — from Washington’s seizure of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro to Trump’s renewed insistence on taking control of Greenland.
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“The United States is an established power, but one that is gradually turning away from some of its allies and breaking free from international rules that it was still promoting recently,” Macron said. “We are living in a world of great powers with a real temptation to divide up the world,” he added, rejecting what he called “a new colonialism and new imperialism.”
Even as he toughened his critique, Macron stopped short of calling for a rupture with Washington. U.S. envoys attended a Paris summit earlier this week on potential security guarantees to uphold any future cease-fire in Russia’s war against Ukraine — a sign that cooperation on core security interests continues despite deepening strains.
“We’re not here to comment. We’re here to act,” Macron told diplomats, urging them not to be “spectators of things coming undone.”
His remarks followed what European capitals condemned as a U.S. operation to seize Maduro and his wife from Venezuela on Saturday and fly them to New York, a move that triggered accusations Washington had undermined international law.
Macron also pointed to Trump’s repeated insistence that he wants to take control of Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, and his refusal to rule out the use of force to do so — comments that have alarmed Denmark and other European allies. Copenhagen has warned that any attack would spell the end of the NATO alliance.
Against that backdrop, Macron urged Europe to double down on multilateralism even as institutions falter. “Multilateral institutions are functioning less and less effectively,” he said, arguing it is nevertheless the moment to “reinvest fully in the United Nations, as we note its largest shareholder no longer believes in it.” He framed the stakes starkly, asking whether people must now wonder “every day” if Greenland will be invaded or if “Canada will face the threat of becoming the 51st state.”
The White House has flagged the United States’ exit from 66 global organizations and treaties — roughly half affiliated with the U.N. — that it deems contrary to U.S. interests.
Macron said Europe must protect its interests across domains, with particular focus on technology and the information space — frequent sources of tension with Washington. He called for the “consolidation” of European regulation of the tech sector, stressed the need to safeguard academic independence, and defended “the possibility of having a controlled information space where opinions can be exchanged completely freely, but where choices are not made by the algorithms of a few.”
Brussels has already adopted a powerful legal arsenal to rein in tech giants through the Digital Markets Act (DMA) on competition and the Digital Services Act (DSA) on content moderation. The United States has denounced the rules as an attempt to “coerce” American platforms into censoring viewpoints they oppose. “The DSA and DMA are two regulations that must be defended,” Macron said.
The French leader’s message was that Europe should neither retreat nor merely lament the erosion of norms. Rather, he argued, the continent must act to shore up collective security, defend the rule-based international order, and assert regulatory sovereignty in the digital sphere — even as it keeps channels open to a United States that, in his view, is stepping back from the very system it once championed.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
