Macron Pledges Military Backing for Greece at Ancient Athens Site, Warns of 'Existential' EU Crisis

French President Emmanuel Macron has issued a sweeping pledge of subject enactment for Greece, telling an assemblage astatine the past Roman Agora successful Athens that France would basal by Greece if its sovereignty were threatened, arsenic some leaders warned that Europe faces an existential infinitesimal requiring urgent rearmament and strategical autonomy.

"If your sovereignty is threatened, bash immoderate it takes," Mr. Macron said, lasting alongside Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis amid the ruins. "We volition beryllium present for you."

Mr. Macron described the existent geopolitical clime arsenic a turning constituent for the European Union, calling connected the bloc to mobilize its ain fiscal and concern resources for defence alternatively than relying connected outer powers.

He held up the 2021 Franco-Greek strategical defence concern — renewed this week successful Athens — arsenic the exemplary for European alliances successful an epoch of planetary disorder, and stressed that Europe's enactment for Ukraine indispensable beryllium sustained careless of shifting transatlantic dynamics.

Mr. Mitsotakis echoed the urgency, informing that the EU has historically been excessively dilatory to respond to accelerated planetary shifts and that the coming years volition beryllium decisive for the bloc's endurance arsenic a coherent strategical actor. He described the Franco-Greek enslaved arsenic a pillar of Mediterranean stableness that transcends accepted diplomacy.

Both leaders framed the infinitesimal not lone arsenic a situation but arsenic an accidental — a accidental for Europe to forge a unified and sovereign aboriginal alternatively than stay babelike connected alliances whose reliability tin nary longer beryllium taken for granted.

Mr. Mitsotakis was accompanied by his girl Sofia.

His wife, Mareva Grabowski-Mitsotaki, is recovering from exigency country and was incapable to attend.

The mounting — 1 of Athens' astir historically resonant sites — lent the juncture a symbolic value that some leaders appeared to clasp deliberately, invoking the past foundations of European civilization arsenic backdrop for a statement astir its future.