Nine Years After the Sorbonne Speech: What Has Europe Delivered?

At the invitation of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), Garance Pineau joined European policymakers and experts in Berlin to assess the legacy of Emmanuel Macron’s Sorbonne speech. The discussion reviewed Europe’s achievements since 2017 and examined the conditions under which France and Germany can translate shared ambitions into greater European power, competitiveness and sovereignty.

Below the key points of this discussion.

Nine years after the Sorbonne speech, what has Europe actually achieved in delivering on the agenda of European sovereignty?

Looking at the facts, the overall assessment is positive. The core intuition of the Sorbonne speech was that Europe needed the capacity to make its own decisions and reduce strategic dependencies. That diagnosis has largely been validated by subsequent events.

The political context has evolved significantly. In France, theories advocating withdrawal from the European Union or the euro have largely disappeared from the mainstream debate. At the same time, the concept of European sovereignty, which was innovative when first introduced, has become widely accepted across Europe. A 2021 Fondation Jean-Jaurès study found that 63% of Germans and 69% of Poles supported the notion of European sovereignty.

In practical terms, Europe has delivered a number of concrete achievements over the past nine years, for example:

• It responded to the COVID-19 crisis through a massive European recovery plan, a historic first.
• It has provided substantial support to Ukraine.
• It has laid the foundations of a common European strategic culture in defence.
• It established a European Defence Fund worth €8 billion.
• The European civil protection mechanism now supports member states facing increasingly severe wildfires.
• The EU has developed regulatory frameworks for the digital economy.
• Europe has created a network of 65 European Universities.
• The Erasmus budget has been doubled.

These educational initiatives may not directly relate to sovereignty in the strict sense, but they contribute to a sense of European belonging, which is ultimately the foundation on which any meaningful sovereignty must rest.

If the strategic vision was largely correct, why has progress often been slower and more difficult than expected?

This question touches on a longstanding French dilemma: France frequently produces ambitious and forward-looking ideas but has often struggled to translate them into reality.

History offers many examples. The Briand Plan of 1929, the European Defence Community in 1954, the Fouchet Plan, François Mitterrand’s European Confederation proposal, and the Constitutional Treaty all reflected French ambitions for Europe. Yet in many cases France focused on the strength and purity of the idea itself while paying insufficient attention to method, coalition-building, diplomacy, and implementation.

The circumstances surrounding the Sorbonne speech illustrate this challenge. Delivered in September 2017, at the very beginning of coalition negotiations in Germany, it demonstrated, if not disregard, then at least a profound misunderstanding of political realities and sensitivities across the Rhine.

Today, however, the challenge is different. The problem is increasingly one of trust and credibility. Across the political spectrum, many European partners perceive that France has not shown sufficient determination to address fundamental domestic issues such as public finances, pension and labour market reforms, the capacity to invest in the future.

Countries that were once considered the “sick men of Europe” and have undertaken difficult reforms can legitimately question whether French ambition alone is sufficient. As a result, restoring France’s domestic credibility has become a prerequisite for ensuring that French proposals continue to carry weight in European debates.

What remains to be done, and what role should France and Germany play in the next phase of European integration?

While much has been achieved since the Sorbonne speech, Europe still faces a new existential challenge. Russia’s war against Ukraine, growing geopolitical uncertainty, and intensifying competition from China require Europe to move beyond preserving past achievements and focus on building the foundations of future power.
The good news is that Europe has significant strengths: a market of 450 million citizens, a strong industrial base, world-class research centres, innovative companies and abundant private savings. The challenge is not diagnosing the problem. As the Draghi and Letta reports have shown, the priorities are already clear.
A genuine European strategy should focus on three areas:

• Supporting innovation by creating European technology champions and building an ecosystem that connects research, public investment, private capital and industrial scale-up, much as Silicon Valley has done in the United States.
• Ensuring security by turning rising defence budgets into real European capabilities through common planning, long-term industrial visibility and a stronger European preference in defence procurement.
• Mobilizing European savings to finance European companies. Europe has ample capital, but too little is invested in productive assets, innovation and growth. Europeans should become the primary owners of Europe’s future businesses.

The battle of ideas has largely been won; the challenge now is implementation.

In this context, France and Germany remain the indispensable engine of this effort. France must restore credibility through sound public finances and structural reforms, while Germany should contribute to the investment effort needed to strengthen Europe’s strategic autonomy. Working in a spirit of complementarity rather than competition, both countries can help transform Europe’s assets into power and ensure that the continent remains prosperous, innovative, secure and sovereign.

As Jean Monnet observed, Europe advances through crises by inventing solutions to overcome them. The task now is to turn today’s challenges into the foundations of a stronger Europe.