The French Foreign Minister, Jean-Nöel Barrot, responded this Tuesday to the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, that European countries “can and must take charge of their own security”, after the head of NATO assured that it is unrealistic to think that the continent can do without the United States to defend itself.
“No, dear Mark Rutte. Europeans can and must take charge of their own security,” said the French Foreign Minister in a message in response to Rutte’s statements in the Foreign Affairs and Security and Defense committees of the European Parliament.
Barrot has stressed that even the United States Administration “agrees” that European allies should be strengthened. “It is the European pillar of NATO,” he claimed.
Rutte told MEPs that Europe and the United States need each other. To those who think that “the European Union or Europe as a whole can defend itself without the United States,” the NATO leader said, “Keep dreaming, you can’t, we need each other,” he ironized.