Emmanuel Macron warns in 2024 Sorbonne speech that "our Europe is mortal, it can die"

The warning came in a 2024 Sorbonne speech by French President Emmanuel Macron, who argued that Europe needed greater capacity to act independently. On 18 September 2026, Gabriel Attal, a former prime minister and Macron ally, presented himself as a presidential hopeful and called for a more federal European Union, a proposal built on Macron’s framework. Macron has advocated letting willing member states deepen cooperation on defense, capital markets and industrial subsidies without being blocked by unanimity rules. Mario Draghi’s competitiveness report argued that EU-wide coordination was needed to avoid economic decline amid US and Chinese competition, while Ursula von der Leyen proposed a Defense Union, an EU defense commissioner and treaty changes, saying individual states could not address external threats and economic weaknesses alone.