France is willing to discuss extending the protection afforded by its nuclear arsenal to its European allies, President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday, as the continent scrambles to fend off heightened Russian aggression and diminishing American support.
France and Britain are the only two countries in Europe with their own nuclear weapons; only France is in the European Union. Russia and the United States are also nuclear powers.
“Our nuclear deterrent protects us — it is comprehensive, sovereign and French through and through,” Mr. Macron said in a televised address that was mostly devoted to the war in Ukraine and Europe’s safety. “Since 1964, it has played an explicit role in preserving peace and security in Europe.”
“I have decided to open the strategic debate on protection through deterrence for our allies on the European continent,” Mr. Macron added.
In 2020, well before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he expressed support for a “strategic dialogue” with European partners “on the role played by France’s nuclear deterrence in our collective security.”
At the time, those ideas had received little traction with France’s allies, many of whom have come to rely on America’s nuclear capabilities.
Now, though, President Trump’s decisions to drop support for Ukraine, pull back America’s traditional security blanket in Europe and pressure allies to spend more on defense have forced the continent to rapidly rethink its security architecture.
In his speech, Mr. Macron painted a stark picture of Europe caught between an unreliable American ally and an increasingly aggressive Russia, which he said was now pouring 40 percent of its state budget into military spending.
“Russia has become a threat to France and Europe for years to come,” he said.
“I want to believe that the United States will remain by our side, but we need to be ready if that were no longer the case,” said Mr. Macron, as he announced that France would convene a meeting of European army chiefs in Paris next week to discuss the possible deployment of peacekeeping troops in Ukraine after the war ends.
“The future of Europe should not be decided in Washington or in Moscow,” he added.
Mr. Macron said opening a debate on nuclear deterrence was “in response to the historic call from the future German Chancellor” — a reference to Friedrich Merz, the center-right politician who is almost certain to be Germany’s next leader.
Mr. Merz said last month that German authorities needed to talk with French and British counterparts about extending their nuclear umbrellas.
“We have a shield; they don’t,” Mr. Macron said of France’s European allies in an interview with Le Parisien last week. “And they can no longer depend on the American nuclear deterrent. We need a strategic dialogue with those who don’t have it, and that would make France stronger.”
Mr. Macron was speaking ahead of a meeting of European leaders in Brussels on Thursday, but his office said that the possibility of extending a national nuclear umbrella, which has also been raised in Britain, was not expected to be a main topic of discussion.
Mr. Macron has said that France could partner with other countries for joint deterrence drills, although the exact contours of what a French or French-British nuclear umbrella for Europe are still fuzzy.
But the idea is contentious for some in France, where Mr. Macron’s political opponents have called it an unacceptable breach of French sovereignty.
Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader, told lawmakers this week that Mr. Macron was “undermining our model of deterrence,” while Laurent Wauquiez, a top lawmaker with the conservative Les Républicains party, argued that “you don’t share the nuclear button.”
Mr. Macron has insisted that France would firmly remain in control of its nuclear weapons and of any decision to use them. His allies have also argued that France’s nuclear deterrence had always been designed with a broad, if purposefully ill-defined, European element in mind.
“Our nuclear deterrence is French and will remain so,” Sébastien Lecornu, France’s defense minister, said on X last week. He said Mr. Macron was merely following a long line of French presidents, stretching back to Charles de Gaulle, who have argued that the country’s vital interests were not limited to its own territory.
“So yes, we need to answer our European partners’ questions about what our deterrence is, what it can mean for them, and what it will remain,” Mr. Lecornu said.
