it is time to start acting like a "power". In the face of growing threats from China, Russia and now the US, he told a group of European newspapers that the continent faced a "wake-up call". "Are we ready to become a power? This is the question in the field of economy and finance, in defence and security, and in our democratic systems. "In another era we might have said it is the moment to 'assume our majority'," he said ahead of an EU summit in Brussels later this week. Macron repeated his call for EU-wide mutualised loans in order to raise hundreds of billions of euros needed for industrial investment. "The time has come to launch a shared debt capacity to fund our future expense - eurobonds for the future. We need big European programmes to finance the best projects," he said.

Similar calls in the past have met scepticism from Germany and other countries, who feel France wants to use Europe to bear a financial burden which it alone - because of its failure to reform - is unable to take up. Macron admitted that France "has never had a balanced model, unlike certain economies of the north, which are built more on a sense of responsibility. "And we have never had reforms like the ones initiated in the 2010s in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece, which are paying dividends today." But he said there was growing demand in the world's financial markets for mutualised European debt, which currently the EU was not equipped to supply. "The world markets are increasingly afraid of the American greenback [dollar]. They want alternatives…

"For investors everywhere a democratic state of law is a huge attraction. And when I look at the world as it is, we have the authoritarian regime that is China, and on the other side we have the US distancing itself further and further from a state of law." According to Macron, the 27-member EU needs €1,2tn (£1tn; $1.4tn) a year to invest in the vital sectors of security and defence, clean energy, and artificial intelligence. Calling on the EU to "protect" these and other industries, he said: "The Chinese do it, the Americans too. Europe today is the most open market in the world. (BBC)