PARIS, February 10. /TASS/. A common loan for EU countries for future projects would allow them to counter the dollar's hegemony, as global markets seek alternatives to the American currency, French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview with Le Monde.
"The global market is increasingly afraid of the American currency and is looking for alternatives, so we need to offer it European debt. When the European budget is limited, the time comes to launch a common borrowing mechanism for future spending, the Eurobonds of the future. Large European programs are needed to finance the best projects. <...> This is an unprecedented opportunity that would also help overcome the dollar's hegemony," he said.
The French president assured that the initiative he proposed would not apply to existing state debt. He also recalled the words of former European Central Bank President (2011-2019), Mario Draghi, who claimed that "green technologies" alone in the EU would require 800 billion euros in private and public investment annually, while adding the defense industry, this figure would rise to 1.2 trillion euros.
"In security and defense, in ecological transition technologies, and in artificial intelligence and quantum technologies, we are investing far less than China and the United States. If the EU does not act within three to five years, it will be pushed out of these sectors. And these investments, if we want to preserve the internal market and prevent further fragmentation, should not be the responsibility of individual countries. They must be joint investments," Macron said.
In this context, the French president questioned the European Union's readiness to become a unified power. In his view, this would be "a way out of its state of immaturity." He expressed his belief that the EU should have "not 27 separate markets," but a single market encompassing all citizens. He also called for the unification of capital markets, the integration of energy networks, and continued work on a common code of business law.
"We united to end wars, we united to create a market, but we always forbade ourselves from thinking about shared power, because before 1945, power meant civil war between us," Macron said.