We did this a little during the crisis at the end of 2017. But we do not know how to do it in the long term. And I have to say, it is our fault collectively. Here too, we have a methodology, we have deep-seated administrative convictions, both at the Interior Ministry and the Foreign Ministry, which mean we tend not to want to budge on these issues. There are all kinds of theories: the pull effect, the… we must reconsider all this dogma. I have been saying this since the summer of 2017. And we ourselves are not doing it. I myself will get more involved in this issue, because I do not believe inertia on this point is in our interest. I say this in a context in which France is becoming the leading European country in terms of asylum applications. Let’s not be naive. Our problem is not the people who take to boats in Libya. It is not the unacceptable scenes that we are experiencing in humanitarian terms. It is all the people who come in via all our European neighbours, who have already started to seek asylum elsewhere and who come because we are quite a badly organized country in this respect, and we are not effective or humane enough on this. We must very much intensify our work on it. Very quickly, in addition to these two issues of borders and defence, we need to think about and organize this European sovereignty, to rebuild real sovereignty with regard to industry and the climate. And I am deliberately linking these two words.
Europe has been great at crafting a competitive strategy. It is very effective for creating more innovation, and more competition, and protecting consumers. It is important not to lose this quality. However, we have neglected our industrial strategy. And we have created conditions for our industrial and technological dependence regarding many issues. Therefore, in a future strategy, we must rethink this industrial strategy, which is linked to the climate agenda as a matter of fact. Because tomorrow’s industry will only be compatible with this agenda. This means Europe should invest in research and investment much more massively and particularly in new industrial sectors, re-establish rules for competition that are compatible with this industrial sovereignty, and consider it important to assess champions in the light of the relevant market, which is now a global market across all its sectors. This means Europe should decide to adopt a genuine climate or industrial strategy and establish a real carbon price that is high enough to encourage the transition that our stakeholders are making and a real tariff at borders to avoid unfair competition of stakeholders that are not making the same transition.
For too long, we have been divided in our action on this issue. It is essential that we re-establish this sovereignty if we are to continue to have genuine sovereignty in the future regarding these issues and continue to produce our power plants, our environmental climate services, our aircraft and defence technologies and all of our industry. That is essential. And in this strategy, I obviously include the technological sovereignty that we must pursue.
And what is our choice when it comes to 5G? Choosing between American and Chinese technology? I am deeply convinced that we must defend genuine European sovereignty regarding this point, without condemning anyone. That is what we decided to do in France with the choices the Prime Minister made with the ministers, so as to determine that in the most sensitive sectors, we needed to control the components and to prevent our telecommunications companies from being too dependent on certain technologies.
In doing so we triggered a genuine European movement. Our partners reconsidered a number of their requirements. We now need to craft a proper strategy along with European stakeholders. We also need to rethink our economic and financial sovereignty. I spoke of Iran earlier. We can continue to defend our Iran agenda with pride. Why do we find ourselves in this situation? Because there is a de facto extraterritoriality of the dollar. Because our companies, even when we decide to protect them and take them forward, are dependent on the dollar. I am not saying that we need to fight the dollar, but we need to build real economic and financial sovereignty of the euro. And we have moved too slowly in this area as well. And what we need to build on is a strengthening, a greater integration of the Euro Area, a greater integration of financial markets of the Euro Area and stakeholders, and a capacity to build everything that truly establishes financial and monetary sovereignty. We are not there yet. And it is essential.
We also need to create digital sovereignty. We have made a great deal of progress on this point, with an unprecedented regulation at European level, protecting individual data, and several of our friends have followed suit. But we need to go even further. And pursue reflection in terms of taxation and data protection. And the European level is the right one for doing this. And cultural sovereignty is also crucial to conducting the project I spoke of earlier. We have successfully defended copyrights but are working on a much more extensive project with regard to European heritage, culture and European knowledge. What we have launched to develop universities and the circulation of artworks and major European cultural projects is crucial, because it is through this means that we can find the strength and inspiration of the project we spoke about earlier. And it is also a sovereignty factor. Because sovereignty sparks Europe’s imagination. And this means considering that the novels and dreams that our fellow citizens have the right to have, read and share, films and performances, must be able to be part of a creative world that is ours, of artists that are ours, and they must not simply have a choice of imported products and creative worlds that do not have our deep roots. I believe that this strategy is absolutely essential, and it should also result in working together and reinvesting in linguistic sovereignty in Europe.
I will not speak about Francophonie, of which I extensively spoke in March 2018 at the Académie Française. It is important to see this strategy all over the world, but it is essential to reinvest in this strategy on a European level. Things may not always make sense. But if after Brexit we were to decide that English will be Europe’s only working language, it would be strange. I think that we truly have a card to play, which is reinventing education in discussion forums. It will require hard work for this European strategy to be successful. You have seen that this sovereignty strategy clearly goes hand in hand with this balancing power strategy.
I am also asking you to reinvest in bilateral work. Sometimes I am surprised to see that Europe has been left to specialists. We need them and they have tremendous attributes. But we clearly need to establish this articulation between the essential interministerial work being done on European issues permeating our daily lives. It must be coordinated. The Prime Minister’s staff is doing this. But I think that we need to reinvest in bilateral dialogue. It rounds out European dialogue. This is because it gives us back room for manoeuvre. I say this to you because this is what I have been doing for the past two years. I have made 20 bilateral visits to European Union countries in two years. Sometimes I returned to countries that presidents haven’t visited in the past 15 to 20 years, which is crazy. And when we reinvest in bilateral action, we sometimes find that we have disengaged in this relationship on a political, cultural and often educational level because French is becoming less popular in many of these countries, etc. However, above all this gives us back room for manoeuvre in the European arena. We manage to find alliances in the Council when we reinvest in bilateral relationships. And I have to say that Germany has been much more effective than us over the past 15 years in this respect. That is why it is important to speak with all groups. We must reinvest in dialogue with Baltic countries, Eastern countries, the Visegrád Group, countries in the Southern Mediterranean region. I think that this is crucial and I am asking you to re-engage extensively.
I also think that we need to successfully reinvest in all the technical issues with a diplomatic angle, and I’ll come back to this point at the end of my speech. It is one of the biggest challenges in our contemporary diplomatic work. Issues are becoming increasingly technical. Therefore, at a time when issues are becoming increasingly technical, there is a risk that we could lose sight of the big picture. And that they are dealt with solely by technicians of particular ministries or people less experienced in technical areas and who therefore know less about them. There could thus be discrepancies. Excuse me for going into such detail on how things are done, but this is how we produce effective results. With regard to digital technology issues, if a diplomat with a general background deals with them, he or she is less effective than a digital technology specialist. And we have tried both scenarios, and I can tell you, there is no comparison. However, if a digital technology specialist works alone in the digital technology field, he or she loses sight of the diplomatic big picture and our interests. We need to find a way to combine their skills effectively. And I think that this is crucial when it comes to Europe. And this is how we can reinvest in areas in which we have lost a lot of ground; they are the subjects of European standards and what enables us to define these sovereignty factors.
Lastly, with regard to Europe, I would like to ask you to reinvest geographically in the Western Balkans. In July, I visited Serbia and some of you accompanied me. I think the last presidential visited dated back to 2001, which is crazy. And when I look at what we are investing on a cultural level, for example, we invest much fewer government funds than in less strategic countries located further from us, at a time when a great deal is expected of us. And to have a European strategy also means to think about Europe’s borders, our margins, our neighbouring countries which really love us and where we should reinvest so as to not allow non-European powers to take action instead of us. If not, the fate of the Western Balkans will be decided by the United States, Russia and Turkey. There again, Germany has a more efficient and strategic approach than us, I must say. I would like us to reallocate resources to this area and become more effective.
The third priority I would like to discuss with you is that of establishing a renewed partnership with the Mediterranean region and Africa. I will not discuss all the geographical areas, I assure you, but I would like to cover a number of points that I was not able to discuss at length with you in my last two speeches and would now like to expound upon. Basically, this partnership is our strategic neighbourhood policy. But it is extremely important to pursue and relaunch it. I am not going to discuss Syria or Libya. I spoke about them at length at yesterday’s press conference. We are working closely on these crisis issues, which we deal with on a daily basis. We are deeply engaged. It was a key issue at the G7 summit, and a priority I discussed. Nor will I speak about the Middle East peace process. The work on this issue must simply be continued and completely relaunched. Why haven’t I decided to take initiatives? Because I think that the necessary conditions have not been met in the region. I think that initiatives that come from the other side of the world are, generally speaking, not very successful. But I am also convinced of one thing: the status quo is not working and cannot persist. As I have said many times, we have our opinions on this issue; France’s position has never been refuted. I believe that together with a few of our allies, we will need to work innovatively to find an effective solution, and we are not there yet.
I would simply like to speak briefly about the Southern Mediterranean region and Africa regarding this partnership. We have very deep and long-standing cultural and civilization-related ties with the Southern Mediterranean region. And Europe, starting with France, cannot succeed if we do not rethink and re-establish these ties. In today’s world, we only speak of the Southern Mediterranean region in terms of migration – this humanitarian tragedy that I have already mentioned – or protection measures we need to organize. There again, we could see a weakening of the geopolitical and domestic situation. Because when we speak of the Southern Mediterranean region and Africa, we are also speaking of France. I reiterated this point during the commemorations in August. France holds within it a piece of Africa, as it was African combatants who saved our country and our liberty. And we have shared destinies, despite the fact that we are also bound by dark chapters and suffering. So in the Maghreb today, we are naturally paying close attention to the situation, to the messages from the Algerian people, to the hugely sensitive current situation in Tunisia. At President Essebsi’s funeral, I saw at first-hand the close ties between France and the people and the nation of Tunisia at this critical time. Always while respecting their sovereignty and the friendship which unites us. We must put these ties to use once again, in a new, balanced way. Without the frills of colonialism or anti-colonialism. I sincerely believe that this can be achieved through increased dialogue between our civil societies.
That is why I wanted to announce in Tunis this Summit of the Two Shores, and thus dialogue between civil, academic and entrepreneurial societies and of course governments, to try to revitalize our two shores, given the links between us, but also no doubt between the countries of the Southern shore. Because what we should now focus on is that the Maghreb is no longer a geopolitical reality, that there are deep divisions between the countries, which weakens them and hinders their development. In June, we held an initial summit in Marseille and I hope that together, we can continue this work and that all of you can be fully committed and seek to encourage new dialogue among these civil societies, intellectuals, and artists.
I must say that in Marseille in June, I was struck by the vitality of this dialogue among the countries which contributed. In particular, there were extraordinarily inspiring young people from Libya, Tunisia and Mauritania, proposing cooperation and ties which nobody had thought of and which are not seen in intergovernmental dialogue. And I believe that this is fertile ground and I want us to embark on it together. Our destiny also goes hand in hand with Africa’s. We are already hugely active but we must continue to do more, in an effort to continue what I called a mutual shift in outlook.
In Africa, we are taking military action – I have already talked to you about this several times in the past so I will be brief, but our action continues. We are taking action in crisis-hit areas, the Libyan crisis which I mentioned, which saw strong progress at this G7 with agreement on an international conference and the inter-Libyan conference, by bringing together African states which up to now had been sceptical about this process, but with which we are working closely. And of course, there is the Sahel. This is an essential theatre of operations for our armies, it is an issue on which, a little over five years ago, France played a key role in avoiding the rise of jihadism and preventing it from taking root. And were it not for France’s quick decision to take action, were it not for the excellence of our armed forces, the situation would probably not be as it currently is in the Sahel. However, it is clear to see that today the situation in the Sahel is becoming unstable and terrorism is on the increase. This is now beginning in the Gulf of Guinea and the Lake Chad region. But we must be careful when discussing terrorism in this region because it does not have the same characteristics as the territorial caliphate which we saw in the Levant. And it is also terrorist groups taking advantage of ethnic divisions and the economic situation and it is, if I may say, a very specific situation to Africa.
However, we must now support the sovereign states of this region. And so against this backdrop, we will naturally continue to take strong action through Operation Barkhane, as always we will be operationally mobile, but it is essential that this be coupled with fresh commitment from our African partners, which we have sought through both the G5 Sahel and the Sahel Alliance, the military pillar and the development pillar, and through the increased commitment from the international community and neighbouring states, as we saw the day before yesterday with Chancellor Merkel and President Kaboré in this new Partnership for Security and Stability in the Sahel, which helps Gulf of Guinea states re-engage. These states were spectators but are now starting to feel the effects of this conflict, which allows partnerships between African states on this subject and also allows involvement from the international community on this security issue to help each of them.
But Africa represents much more for us, it is our essential ally so that Europe can continue to play its full role in global affairs, and in an address in Ouagadougou in November 2017, we laid the foundations of the new partnership which we will need to meet our major future challenges, and it is on this basis that we must continue. And here too, I am asking you to perform a difficult job, but one which I believe absolutely essential, to transform our own action, the relationship with our African partners and our methods.
First by assisting Africa with its ongoing regional projects and integration – I believe we must play a part in this change. This is why we support ECOWAS as it moves towards a single currency, because up to now there have been obstacles from our perspective and tensions from theirs. It will be a long path and nothing is certain, but I think that France would be making a historical contribution to help West Africa truly achieve economic and monetary integration. This is also why we support the African Union’s project to move towards an African Continental Free Trade Area. This is also why we have once again asked the African Union to work with us on every conflict, to lead operations and support this strategy of UN operations working in close partnership with the African Union. This is also why, with regard to the most sensitive political issues, and sometimes the most complex situations of democratic and political transition, I admit that we have adopted a strategy of peer pressure and not of direct expression or lecturing on what should be done.
I have sometimes been criticized for my silence, but this silence has never been synonymous with inaction. It is built through meticulous strategies of alliances with other African leaders so that action can be taken. And I believe that in the DRC, this strategy has reaped rewards – I don’t know if it helped achieve everything sought from a democratic point of view, but it enabled what was desirable as regards a transfer of power. And on many other contentious issues, such as Togo for a while, and others which will come in the future, I believe that this strategy is the common thread which must inspire us. But more broadly, I believe that what we want is to no longer have a relationship with Africa based on a sentiment of, or sometimes realities of, asymmetry. And this means creating our strategies with our African partners, moving them forward with our African partners and reinvesting these strategies with them and for them.
It is for this reason that we added a major sporting component to the Ouagadougou Agenda, with a partnership with basketball and football federations, as well as Olympic federations and countries. We addressed cultural issues, broaching the vast issue of returning works of art, which is essential to help many of these states rebuild and rethink their stories, and to do so in collaboration with France. This is also why we wanted to reopen the issue of education – here too on new foundations. And I take full responsibility for the university reform which was undertaken because it was coupled with a responsible educational strategy.
Up to now, we have accepted everyone in France free of charge, which was great, and we had a system which was in fact post-colonial, to use the fine words employed by some. Because we used to say to all students in many countries, “Do you want to go into higher education? Then come to France, you’ll have great opportunities.” And we thus recognized that it was impossible for them to even do a degree in their own countries. We have adopted a strategy that says that higher education comes with a cost, and I think that is fair. But our price is 10 to 20 times less than that of the Canadians, many other Europeans or the Americans. We have made efforts as regards scholarships, meaning that university registrations have not reduced this year. But alongside that, we have reinvested in a strategy of educational partnerships, particularly in Africa, for the first time by opening up university degrees in countries which have been our allies for many decades and by allowing students to do courses in Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire, as strange as it may seem, and offering them in Tunisia and Algeria. And I think that this is the true path of development for this partnership, for our teachers to disseminate our educational strength, to allow educational development in these countries and to have a true strategic alliance and no hegemony.
This is also what we want in economic terms, a thought for this new African partnership. The initiative known as AFAWA, which was announced a few days ago for female entrepreneurship, was devised by Africans with the African Development Bank. We are financing it. And therefore what I call a shift in outlook, i.e. that we ourselves must take action and work in a different way with Africans for themselves, to think out their action with them and consider that the most advanced actions must be carried out with Africans in Africa. And I have two examples of this: for me, climate transition is one of the strategic focuses of the action which we must take with Africa, because Africans are the main victims of climate change and because they can be the main players in implementing transition. The Desert to Power Initiative by the African Development Bank and World Bank must be at the heart of the relationship which the French Development Agency has with these structures, and which naturally plays an essential role therein, and this is what we were able to launch and develop, e.g. a few months ago in Burkina Faso. And it is this same strategy in Africa which we must have as regards innovation.
It is also for that reason that innovation will be the main theme of the Africa-France summit which we will host in Bordeaux in 2020. It is a means of acknowledging that ultimately, the continent’s future must be prepared in Africa, with the people of Africa. I believe that on this issue, this line, which is sometimes delicate for us, is an essential strategy and the most effective. We must not fall into the trap of making Africa a theatre of influence. Today, there are Chinese, Japanese and Turkish strategies in Africa, each with their own approaches, and of course an American strategy in Africa. I sincerely believe that ours must not be a strategy of market share and influence, of predatory hegemony, which is sometimes at the core of some of the projects which I have just mentioned. No, our strategy must be to reinvent a partnership, because we have sometimes made mistakes in the past. So we can draw inspiration and learn from our past mistakes. I believe that this is the only line to take. Naturally, I will not talk about this point for all issues, and I think it is important to maintain the strategies which we have on our other continental plates.
The fourth priority that I wanted to come back to here and which is an essential issue for me is to, through concrete results, establish diplomacy based on global commons and to try through the multilateral framework to do our best to provide an answer to the world’s imbalances and the inequality I mentioned earlier. To achieve this, we first need to focus our efforts back on the multilateral framework. This is often said when talking about strong multilateralism. Some would like to build things outside the multilateral framework, working on the idea that they can do better by deciding for themselves. I do not think that this is in our best interest. And the big risk is that an alternative multilateral framework may be built by others, particularly China, as this is at the heart of the Chinese strategy. I therefore believe that if we want to achieve proper results through this diplomacy of global commons, we must adopt this strong multilateralism, be present and strong within multilateral forums like we are at the UN, revitalize and innovate in forums that are in crisis such as the WTO. This is the commitment that we have decided to take on.
If we do not innovate at the WTO, the WTO will cease to exist. We must also find new allies. This is what we are trying to achieve with the initiative on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, with an alliance for a new type of multilateralism, as well as through our work with Germany. Not only will we bring together European powers but also democratic powers with goodwill and who share this vision of the world and are sensitive to such balances. I believe that this strategy is absolutely essential if we want to maintain these multilateral structures, fully revitalize them and promote their ideas, or at least permeate them. But beyond that, on many global commons issues, we need to see results in the coming months.
The most urgent is, of course, the climate and biodiversity. I believe that the next year is absolutely crucial for this. Many things are changing. As regards global warming, as I said, we know the American position, but has this weakened our international diplomatic game? I believe it has not. We have managed to convince Russia to ratify the Paris Agreement, a process which has been on hold since Russia signed the Agreement. As I mentioned, we have convinced India to join the 2050 Carbon Neutrality Coalition. So things are starting to change quite radically. The forthcoming events will be important. The UN Secretary-General’s climate summit in September, the COP in Chile in December, the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Marseille in June 2020 and then the biodiversity COP in Beijing in October. We must continue to make practical progress and work within coalitions on these issues.
Firstly as regards financing: at the G7, I announced that we would be doubling France’s contribution to the Green Climate Fund. In total, and through the commitments by Germany and the United Kingdom, €4.8 billion was committed. I ask you to do all you can to obtain individual contributions to the replenishment of the Green Climate Fund. We aim, in September, to reach a new level on involvement of all the actors of the financial system to ensure that they include climate risks in their investment decisions. Without this, we won’t be able to scale up the ecological transition. As you are aware, France received this mandate together with Jamaica on this issue of financing. We must therefore use our entire diplomatic toolbox to achieve this result. This will also be the objective of the One Planet Summit created by France and held annually since December 2017 and which will be organized on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. In addition to financing issues, we must make progress on the Carbon Neutrality Coalition which I mentioned earlier and which we also promoted at the G7.
The priority for this is to make progress at European level according to the directions set out by the new Commission President. I recall that in March there were two of us, and in China in May there were eight European countries involved. We have now convinced many others and I believe that we are going to finish the job in the coming weeks. This will enable us to engage in decisive dialogue on this issue, particularly with China. I mentioned that China made important progress at Osaka on this issue, and I believe that the visit that I will make to China in November should continue to build on the progress on this issue, because, as I mentioned earlier, China has become a key partner. We must also continue the momentum generated by these tangible coalitions. I will not cite each one here, but the vast majority were presented during the G7 summit. They include coalitions on HFC gases, maritime transport and the textiles industry. These tangible groups will help to tackle sectors which have been completely ignored until now. The textiles industry is the second-largest emitter of CO2. No concerted action has been taken until now.
We have managed to mobilize industrial actors, but states must now make commitments to produce the regulatory changes that support this work. We are talking about a sector which produces 8% of emissions and 30% of ocean pollution. As regards HFCs, which are far more polluting than CO2, we have also started an unprecedented strategy with industry stakeholders involving India. We must now see results. As regards maritime transport, we know that this is a polluting industry which is also making commitments, but we must also concentrate on this in international forums and together with our main partners. As regards biodiversity, we know that we must take urgent action and much remains to be done. For the first time, during the G7 summit we signed a charter for biodiversity. This was the tangible result of a first report from the IPBES in the spring. We must now translate this into a concrete agenda. This will be the responsibility of the Marseille summit and especially of the biodiversity COP in China. This work is essential. But the step taken in Biarritz was a historical one. Because the biodiversity charter was not only signed by G7 members but also countries like South Africa and India. On this issue, it would be impossible not to mention what is happening in Brazil, which led to an extremely quick reaction form the G7 members and all powers present. I was able to present the Amazon initiative yesterday with President Pinera.
This initiative responds to the urgent needs by using our resources. I would like to thank the Minister of the Interior on this issue as he reacted immediately sending several firefighters in the region straight to the affected areas, as well as providing financial contributions with several other countries which could be the most effective solution, and, above all, involving us straight away in the reforestation. This issue is crucial for each of the Amazon countries and crucial for the planet as a whole, both from a climate change and biodiversity perspective. In this regard, I noted the concerns and what I am sure was clumsiness on the part of several leaders who believe that sovereignty is synonymous with aggressiveness. I believe that this is a fundamental error. We are a sovereign country, but at times of major events we willingly and openly accept international solidarity because it is a sign of friendship. But, above all, there are nine countries in the Amazon. Many other countries have requested our help and it is therefore important to take quick action to ensure that Colombia, Bolivia and all the regions of Brazil that wish to have access to this international assistance may have access and quickly reforest the region.
More generally on these issues, we must consider how to continue this agenda and carry out several initiatives. We are seeing a change in the international framework. The first change is when we speak about the Arctic, Antarctic, oceans, Amazonian forest and African forest, which is burning too, while respecting the sovereignty of the states who have territorial jurisdiction over these regions, we are very clearly speaking about geographical common goods that are inextricably linked to our biodiversity and the climate issue. We must also build good governance and the international framework for useful action. I believe this is essential. Furthermore, we must continue the work we started to create new environmental rights, which has been blocked by many.
The work we started after the working group chaired by Laurent Fabius to build this new international environmental law, and the demarche launched by France, must be resumed. I believe that we must not give up on this and I hope we can get French diplomacy strongly behind this objective once again through a new initiative, because it complements all of the actions that I have just mentioned. Of course, when we talk about global commons, we also include health. I would like to briefly mention that France will be hosting the Replenishment Conference for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Lyon in October. Our entire diplomacy is expected to be heavily involved in supporting this. At the G7 summit, we added a total of nearly €5 billion in financing to the Fund. I will announce France’s contribution in Lyon, but I would ask you in the meantime to do all you can to meet our objective of €13 billion.
French diplomacy must also work for gender equality. We put it at the heart of the fight against inequality at the G7 summit, but we must continue with genuinely feminist diplomacy. We must recognize the work of the previous G7 presidency, held by Canada, in initiating and inspiring this action. We decided to keep the Advisory Council for Gender Equality and adopted a formal legislative package in accordance with the recommendations made. This work must be continued and stepped up for the conference we will hold in Paris in July 2020, and Beijing in 2025 which will be an important date in terms of results on this issue. The fight against inequality is also a genuine educational agenda. As I have mentioned, it is the common thread between our national and international strategy.
Last year we invested heavily in rebuilding the Global Partnership for Education with our Senegalese friends. We undertook to commit more and we must continue in this vein. It is one of the priorities of the French Development Agency, it is a priority of our work, it should also be a priority for our operational engagement, as I mentioned earlier on the subject of Africa. It will also be one of the priorities which runs deeply through the reform of the Agency for French Education Abroad which the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs will present to you in his speech. This was inspired by work in Parliament written by some of you present here in this room and created in very close collaboration with the Minister for National Education. This will help us not only to develop the French education model, to be able to not only provide the service that we want for our fellow citizens but also to develop teaching in French and teaching with French methods. This strategy is set to continue with a considerable investment in trainer training. I believe that wherever we invest in education we cannot be satisfied with providing loans or buildings, we must also ensure that we are doing enough for high-quality education, and this will be part of our investment strategy. We are giving ourselves the resources to take action on all of these issues. I therefore confirm the commitment that I made to increase France’s official development assistance to 0.55% of GDP by 2022.
This investment of solidarity is at the heart of our strategy; we must now define all the actionable levers and above all make sure that our strategy is coherent with the crucial priorities that I have mentioned. This is the goal I have set myself for the Presidential Council for Development which I will hold in October. The Minister will then present the text that will follow.
The last priority I want to talk to you about is our methods. If we wish to succeed in being a balancing power, rebuilding European sovereignty, obtaining results through a diplomacy of the global commons, and renewing the partnership with Africa and the Mediterranean, I believe that we also need to continue to overhaul our methods. Thanks to your work and your involvement, the G7 summit was an illustration of this method, which I believe in. I raised this point earlier more strategically – it’s about boldness. If France and Europe are audacious in reviewing their thought patterns and reflexes, and renewing their commitment to international bodies, no one else will do it for us. We are the only ones for whom inertia is deadly. Others can have a non-multilateral, unilateral or bilateral strategy, we cannot. So I strongly encourage you to embody this boldness and, to some extent, this wide-ranging freedom of action, in a very simple way.
Firstly, I think it is essential to renew and enhance ties with civil society – as I know many of you are doing – in all of the areas in each of the countries where you represent France, and where bilateral relationships and our understanding of deeper issues are played out. Meetings with artists, intellectuals and creators show the deep divisions in these countries, and help us to understand what politics or the aspects we perhaps focus on too much do not allow us to see. I really believe that this is the contribution that needs to be made by our diplomatic network. It is a very difficult task, I know, but this is where our added value lies. So I ask you to meet all these groups, meet young people – their ideas, their aspirations and their projects – and tell them about France and what makes it unique, attractive and innovative, and also to understand the underlying issues being played out in each of these countries. I firmly believe that this is needed for our diplomacy. I also think that, if we wish to be at the epicentre of efforts to rethink major global trends and act usefully, we must work with civil society, and this is where we need to keep innovating.
This is why, last year, I created the first Paris Peace Forum. The purpose of this Forum is to bring together in Paris, at least once a year, renowned philosophers, think tanks, businesses and governments from around the world, to meet and establish a joint agenda. This work with civil society – with intellectuals and academic circles around the world – is essential if we wish to rebuild ourselves, reflect in the right way on the issues I mentioned earlier, and act usefully through the right channels. We were able to make progress on the Internet information protection agenda at the G7 summit because we worked closely with Reporters Without Borders, because they launched this initiative at the Paris Peace Forum last year, and because we have continued our work in this field. In sowing these seeds, we create ideas that we would not have come up with ourselves, we follow through, and we gain partners for our own diplomacy.
And I believe that this work with civil society should not just be a box to be ticked. It is how we rebuild our deep understanding of a country, France’s deeper understanding in these countries, but it is also a useful action for us and at the international level. Because working with civil society in each of these countries helps to ensure that our actions are mirrored in these countries. For this reason, when we talk about the Amazon, we will continue working with indigenous peoples, regions and non-governmental organizations, because they will also put pressure on governments, including when they are tempted by obscurantism. This work is central to the effectiveness of our diplomacy. But, over and above this, I am asking you to step up your intellectual audacity and operational tenacity. Think outside the box. I have shared with you some of my convictions; I expect you to share them and act effectively to build on them. But I also think that you should be proactive; you need to help those in Paris – directorates, ministries, government and myself – rethinking these changing equilibriums.
Contemporary diplomacy is changing, and sometimes we remain bogged down in trench warfare. Be proactive, be audacious, make proposals. And make sure you have that operational effectiveness that establishes our credibility in building and encouraging initiatives everywhere, at the bilateral and multilateral levels, and in obtaining results. I think that this is a very useful element. This audacious and changing diplomacy is essential if we wish to rebuild. As I said, we have taken steps to attempt to convince the Americans that solving the issue of international trade is not just about waging trade wars. But this only applies if we ourselves manage to reform the World Trade Organization. Basically, what I am asking you is to no longer be experts, but to be connoisseurs and friends of the people in the countries you are in, and inventors of a new kind of diplomacy. In tomorrow’s world, we will still need technical experts, but if we have experts everywhere, we will be stuck in yesterday’s world, because, by definition, experts specialize in what already exists. So I need experts on some topics, in-depth connoisseurs, but also friends – because that is what I think is necessary – entrepreneurs and diplomatic innovators. It is not just a whim, this is what we really need.
Lastly, as the Minister will state, and as the Prime Minister will reiterate, there have been many changes which have affected your lives, but when are we actually effective? I think it is the underlying purpose of our diplomacy when the entire French state works towards the same end. This covers a whole lot of organizational issues; it is not for me to go into them. I know that there were a lot of discussions on whether economic services would be at the Quai d’Orsay, not at the Quai d’Orsay, whether climate diplomacy would be this or that. I know what implications these decisions have in terms of organization and, sometimes, budget. But I think that, above all, we must be effective. So if we want to be effective, France must have a single voice everywhere, it must be at the top of its game in each of these areas, and it must have the necessary resources and act as a team. As I said earlier, we need assemblers that support this strategy and who are supported by effective specialists. If the assembler does not understand the issues, he or she is useless; if the specialist does not have the overall strategy, he or she can be dangerous. As we all want a consistent and effective strategy, I think that these organizational improvements are essential if we are to have our say concerning the digital agenda, the cyber agenda, the space agenda, and the major industrial and technological standards agenda, which is also central to tomorrow’s diplomacy. Here also, I would like us to really innovate.
When I look at how others operate, I think that we need organizations that, over time, allow us to better understand people, countries and regional transitions. But we also need organizational mobility, so that when we have priorities, we can create project teams that focus all their energy on the project at hand and, in some cases, lead us to review our priorities. There is no point in having an army for trench warfare if the war we are fighting is a war of movement. This means we must also reconsider our reflexes. This is not only true of diplomacy. It is true for the entire State. Like you, I am struck by the fact that, from an organizational point of view, most of our budget, 95%, goes towards recurring expenses. 95% that are often priorities. These are everyday lives. So new priorities are allocated 5% of our time. It cannot work. So we must be more mobile.
There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. I know that I’ve taken up a lot of time. However, I haven’t been exhaustive. Over and above the G7 summit in recent days, which was an excellent demonstration of our diplomacy, I wanted to share these convictions with you and present these ideas. Ladies and gentlemen, our diplomacy is strong and consistent. I say this because it must never be forgotten. In comparing ourselves, each time, we have shown that we need to mobilize. We can be proud of this, and I want to emphasize this here.
Our diplomacy is also strong because we have a strong army, a strong state, and I think it is essential that we continue to reflect on ourselves. I want our strong diplomacy to work towards the strategic goal I have just mentioned: in a rapidly changing world, to regain control over our destiny. To give our people back some of the control they are owed, and to breathe new life into the European civilization project we have contributed, politically, strategically, culturally and in terms of imagination.
Our diplomacy has a key role to play in this respect. The new humanism I believe in, which we need to build and which must be central to the government’s strategy, must also be central to our diplomacy. I am counting on you for this every day. I will be as exacting as I am appreciative. And I will always stand alongside you to ensure that France is central to these major issues, that our citizens have strong representatives everywhere, that our interests are defended and, over and above our interests, that our values are upheld everywhere.
Thank you very much.
Long live the Republic, long live France!./.
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