January 21, 2026 | 10:55 am
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - French President Emmanuel Macron opened his speech at the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday with a joke, saying, "It's a time of peace, stability, and predictability," to laughs from the chamber.
"It's clear we are reaching a time of instability, of imbalances," he said, citing global shifts towards autocracy from democracy, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and more wars around the world — "even though I understand a few of them were fixed," in a dig at US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly boasted of ending several wars since entering office last year.
The French president warned against "a world where international law is trampled underfoot," and a world where the strong do what they will while the weak suffer what they must.
In reference to the latest disputes about Greenland, Macron described the threat of further sanctions from the US towards Europe as "fundamentally unacceptable, even more so when they are used as leverage against territorial sovereignty."
He said he wanted to rule out two approaches to the new threats in the world, firstly to "passively accept the law of the strongest," saying it didn't make sense to accept "a sort of new colonial approach."
But Macron also warned against adopting "a purely moral posture," saying this path "would condemn us to marginalization and powerlessness."
"France must defend effective multilateralism," he said, as his government takes up the G7 presidency in 2026.
"We do prefer respect to bullies," he said towards the end of his address. "We do prefer science to conspiracy. We do prefer rule of law to brutality."
Read: Macron Denies Trump's Claims About Plans for G7 Meeting in Paris
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