He invited Putin to France in 2019 in an effort to relaunch a dialogue on the European security architecture - without prior notice to said Europeans - and since the beginning of the war in Ukraine he mentioned that Russia too should be provided with security guarantees and that it shouldn’t be humiliated. Firstly, it was meant as tacit atonement for his previous overtures to Russia. Macron’s speech in Bratislava last week had several purposes. It also contributes to the common strategic culture that Macron wants Europeans to share. Since Moldova is very vulnerable to Russian political destabilization and potential aggression, the show of strategic solidarity displayed in Bulboaca was crucial for its security. Forty-nine European leaders met in Bulboaca, Moldova for this second edition of the EPC, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy joined too - proof that the very existence of the platform strengthens Europe as a whole. Moldova hosted the second summit on June 1, 2023. The countries decided to meet every six months, with the host rotating between non-EU and EU member states. Nonetheless, 44 countries participated in the October 2022 Prague meeting, no doubt motivated to overcome their misgivings and differences by their common abhorrence of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale aggression in Ukraine. Many Eastern Europeans had initially interpreted this proposal as a French maneuver to prevent EU enlargement, and (even worse), to circumvent NATO. The EPC is meant to be a platform to tackle a broad spectrum of security issues, from traditional security to critical infrastructure and energy connectivity. This was a major point of contention between France and Germany as well as between the French and Eastern Europeans, until recently. The French have been known to be very reluctant proponents of EU enlargement, favoring a deepening and reform of the Union before opening it to others. The EPC was announced by Macron in a speech on May 9, 2022, as a way to move forward simultaneously on both enlarging and deepening the Union. Ukraine and Moldova were granted EU candidate accession status by the European Council in June 2022, followed by the Czechs’ hosting of the first meeting of the European Political Community (EPC) in Prague in October 2022. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had acknowledged the shift of Europe’s center of gravity to the East in his Prague speech in August 2022 in no uncertain terms: “The center of Europe is moving eastward.” If Paris didn’t assert it so openly, a shift was, in fact, occurring. And, in this symbolic gesture, he is also looking to bridge divergences inside the EU on the way forward for future integration. Macron is now saying that Western Europe lost an opportunity when it didn’t listen to the concerns relayed by the Eastern Europeans.

In 2003, French President Jacques Chirac shocked his Eastern partners by declaring they had “lost an opportunity to keep their mouths shut,” in reference to their support of the U.S. The speech at GLOBSEC conveys a sense of unity, defends a commonality of purpose for the future of the European Union and European security, and atonements for his and his predecessors’ neglect of Eastern Europe. Macron was once a proponent of rapprochement between Europe and Russia, much to the dismay of Central and Eastern Europeans, for whom NATO’s Article 5 security guarantee is existential. On May 31, 2023, French President Emmanuel Macron gave a speech at GLOBSEC, a security conference organized by a think tank in the Slovak capital Bratislava, wherein he formalized his much-awaited opening to the East of Europe.

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