Despite Emmanuel Macron's vocal calls for European "strategic autonomy," France remains the EU member most opposed to genuine consolidation of the European defense sector, a new Foreign Affairs analysis has revealed, as "Hvylya" reports.
Hugo Bromley, an Applied History Research Fellow at Cambridge's Centre for Geopolitics, argued that a consolidated European defense sector "would require countries to forsake key sources of employment and export revenue in favor of a system with little democratic oversight or coordination." For France, this would mean abandoning the principles of national independence that have driven its statecraft since 1958.
The contradiction has already produced a concrete casualty. French unwillingness to surrender control over defense has wrecked the Franco-German FCAS fighter jet project - one of the most ambitious European defense collaborations in recent history.
Bromley acknowledged that many of Paris's concerns are understandable. Creating a European defense sector would require all member states to agree on the nature of the threats Europe faces, how those threats should shape capability development, who controls the intellectual property behind new weapons systems, and - crucially - a common approach to arms exports. Brussels, the scholar argued, simply lacks the institutional tools and political mandate to resolve any of these questions.
The analysis suggested that France's behavior is not hypocrisy but a rational response to structural realities. No major European power is willing to hand over sovereignty on matters of national defense to a supranational institution that lacks the tools to manage it. Macron's rhetoric, in this reading, is aimed at positioning France as Europe's security leader - not at building the genuinely integrated defense architecture he publicly advocates.
Also read: The US Failed to Build It: Why the Pentagon Turned to Ukrainian Drone Companies.