Le Pen rejects sharing French nuclear deterrence command with EU

4 months ago 18

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen spoke out against the “Europeanisation” of France’s nuclear firepower on Thursday, claiming that no EU commissioner would ever have the democratic legitimacy to decide on nuclear strikes.

Overseeing a nuclear attack is “inseparable from national [democratic] legitimacy,” Le Pen wrote in an opinion piece in Le Figaro, slamming French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent hints that France’s nuclear deterrence capability could be shared with other European nations.

In a much-awaited speech on the future of the EU at the end of April, Macron called for developing a “credible European defence”.

“Nuclear deterrence is at the heart of France’s defence strategy. It is, therefore, an essential element in the defence of the European continent,” he had said at the time.

Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN), now polling far ahead of its contenders in the European elections with 32%, has repeatedly said it would oppose creating a “defence union”.

RN is also against abolishing the unanimity voting rule on EU foreign policy and security matters despite recent calls to bring in qualified majority voting.

With France remaining as the only member state armed with nuclear weapons, now that the UK has left the EU, bringing nuclear deterrence under EU-wide decision-making would “further weaken our [French] democracy, which has already been stripped of most of its prerogatives in favour of unelected supranational bodies,” Le Pen said.

Le Pen also rejected the idea of creating a specific post for the EU defence commissioner, as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen floated in February.

A commissioner would lack any democratic legitimacy to decide on potential nuclear attacks and the management of an effective deterrence strategy, the far-right leader added.

She wrote, “Who will decide what action to take? Whether the response should be conventional or nuclear?”

Ultimately, any “Europeanisation” of nuclear forces would lead to a lack of effective decision-making capabilities and would fail to maintain the level of ambiguity necessary for such weapons.

According to Le Pen, nuclear deterrence must remain exclusively French, as doing otherwise would amount to a “betrayal” of the French constitution.

“It’s as though, with three years to go before the end of his term in office, [Macron] needed to take down the last remaining pillars of our national independence,” Le Pen criticised.

Those in Macron’s camp have already refuted the argument that the president is ready to abandon national deterrence, instead pointing out that EU defence is a factor that must be integrated into France’s overall nuclear weapon strategy.

(Theo Bourgery-Gonse | Euractiv.fr)