Emmanuel Macron has hit back at Donald Trump, warning that ‘we’re shifting to a world without rules’ where ‘international law is trampled underfoot, and the only law that matters is that of the strongest’.
The French President’s World Economic Forum address comes after Trump published messages showing Macron’s confusion over Greenland and his proposal to hold a G7 meeting in Paris on Thursday that would include Russian representatives on the margins.
Sporting a pair of aviator sunglasses, the French president told the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday: ‘It’s… a shift towards a world without rules, where international law is trampled underfoot and where the only law that seems to matter is that of the strongest’, adding that what he called ‘imperial ambitions’ were resurfacing.
In Davos on Tuesday, the French leader also said that Europe should not hesitate to deploy’ tools at its disposal to protect its interests, amid the escalating trade threats from Trump in the run-up to the US president’s own highly anticipated speech.
He denounced the US competition, stating it aims to ‘subordinate Europe’.
Macron opened his speech by saying: ‘It’s time of peace, stability and predictability, yet we have approached instability and imbalance,’ adding that ‘conflict has become normalised.’
But while Macron did not directly address the US President, he noted that 2025 had been plagued by dozens of wars, saying: ‘I hear some of them have been settled. We do prefer respect to bullies’.
This is a breaking news story. More to follow.
