Europe needs new military alliance, France's Fillon says
by Compiled from Wire Services
ISTANBULJan 24, 2017 - 12:00 am GMT+3
by Compiled from Wire Services
Jan 24, 2017 12:00 am
Conservative French presidential hopeful Francois Fillon wants a new European military alliance to protect the continent and fight Daesh.
Fillon outlined the plan in an interview with Le Monde and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ahead of a meeting Monday in Berlin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Fillon did not explain how the new alliance would work with NATO, which Trump has called obsolete.
Fillon is the frontrunner in opinion polls but his ratings have dropped slightly and surveys predict an increasingly tight race between him, far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen and independent centrist Emmanuel Macron.
While Alain Juppe, a more centrist, staunchly pro-European Union candidate whom Fillon beat in the conservative primaries, was said to be Merkel's favourite candidate, the lunch meeting is a sign of support for Fillon.
But she looks unlikely to give him explicit backing - the lunch meeting is not open to the media and no joint statement is planned afterward.
Merkel, up for re-election herself in September, publicly backed conservative Nicolas Sarkozy when he sought re-election in 2012. He lost. On the issue of economic reform, where Fillon proposes steep spending cuts, he is viewed by Merkel's government as an ally, but on other issues, from Russia and Turkey to migration and Europe, Fillon could prove a more difficult partner. An aide to Fillon mentioned immigration and Russia as "two difficult topics," while insisting both agree on the need to take joint initiatives to boost the euro zone. "The Franco-German relationship is absolutely essential. Nothing in Europe will be done without its impetus," Fillon told Le Monde newspaper. "I want to strengthen it, in a partnership of equals," Fillon said, accusing Socialist President Francois Hollande of weakening a partnership in which "the French and Germans do not speak frankly to each other."
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