Article #237914

Facing existential challenges on trade and security, the bloc has finally realised it has to grow up and go it alone – but the path ahead is a rocky one

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Emmanuel Macron put it simply – and starkly. Confronted with “a world in disarray” and a double, potentially existential challenge from the US and China, he said: “Europe must become a power.”

The bloc is facing “a Chinese tsunami” on trade, Macron told several European newspapers, as the country most Europeans had for decades seen principally as an infinite export market transforms itself instead into a ferocious, low-price, hi-tech competitor.