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00:00 Hammering home his vision for a bold and assertive future for Europe,
00:03 French President Emmanuel Macron addressed a crowd at the Nexus Institute in The Hague on Tuesday.
00:09 "The pandemic and the war just pushed us in a situation to discover that
00:14 we have to reduce our dependencies if you want to preserve the European identity,
00:19 otherwise we will progressively be dependent on everything."
00:23 Macron has long trumpeted the need for a strategic autonomy for Europe.
00:27 But after his controversial statements over the weekend,
00:31 cautioning against being pulled into a crisis over Taiwan,
00:34 in The Hague he chose to focus on economic sovereignty.
00:38 "We can set up a new economic doctrine which will allow us to reconcile creating jobs,
00:46 financing our social model, dealing with climate change and being more sovereign and deciding for ourselves."
00:53 Macron has called for bolstering the EU's weight on the world stage,
00:58 through developing ambitious industrial policies.
01:01 He's also an advocate for more protectionism in strategic sectors such as energy and cyber security.
01:08 "The EU has for the first time equipped itself with a tool allowing to block or ban
01:13 holdings of foreign acquisitions in strategic companies.
01:18 What we decided through this regulation is a complete ideological change.
01:25 Until very recently we just considered we were open without any conditions."
01:31 The French president has also championed efforts to make joining the Paris Climate Accord
01:37 an essential condition for future trade agreements.