Speech by the President of the Centre Jean Gol and the MR: For a sovereign Europe with a President of the European Union

“Loving Europe means wanting to reform it.” Europe has the resources, the talent and the know-how to be a great power. What it lacks is the political will to embrace that role.​

For 30 years, European leaders avoided debates that were nonetheless unavoidable. We criticised the United States while depending on them for our security. We moralised towards China while outsourcing our industry and raw materials to them. We banned nuclear power out of dogma, then found ourselves on our knees before Russian gas. We created rules upon rules, until innovation was stifled.​

The result is there, in figures: Europe now accounts for only 65% of American GDP. Only 5% of global venture capital in artificial intelligence is invested in Europe. In fifty years, no European tech company has been created from scratch and surpassed 100 billion in market capitalisation.

Three main focuses: innovation and industry, common defence, and major unifying projects. Three areas where Europe has all the assets and fails to use them. His closing message is an invitation: loving Europe does not mean staying silent about its flaws. It means having the courage to want to transform it.​

Closing speech by Georges-Louis Bouchez, President of the MR and of the Centre Jean Gol, delivered on 13 March 2026 at the Egmont Palace in Brussels, at the close of the international colloquium “Europe reclaiming its sovereignty”.

I said earlier: a change of governance, economic decision-making, decision-making on security matters, and also decision-making on our ability to reinvest in technology. And today I think that must be our challenge. Europe must stop scattering itself across a multitude of policies. We must certainly focus on three main areas.

The first is innovation and industry.

Did you know that today only 5% of global venture capital invested in artificial intelligence goes to the European Union? That's 50% in the United States, 40% in China. We need to rebalance these relationships. Because if artificial intelligence truly is the industrial revolution we're promised, current investment figures risk becoming future GDP figures or the distribution of global wealth.

To invest in technology and rebuild industry, we need to lighten the rules, we need to cut back a whole series of regulations, and I think politicians would be well advised to pass laws that repeal laws, rather than constantly wanting to add more.

We must also, on the fiscal front, stop the constant moralising of public debate. I'm sorry to say it, at the risk of shocking some, but taxation is not meant to be moral. It is meant to be efficient. Efficient taxation is that which does not stifle economic development and which allows the State to secure sufficient resources to fund solidarity and public services. But systematically, once you fall into moralising logic, you see the result. You get capital flight, less interest in working, and you fail to prepare the sectors of the future.

The second element is strengthening a common defence capability.

Did you know that overall, the lack of European integration costs 2,000 billion euros every year? 2,000 billion euros. That's the cost of having states organise themselves separately, making public purchases and pursuing public policies in complete isolation, rather than integrating them at European level.

There is a challenge in this military integration, but also a broader integration, which is a security issue, but also a matter of being able to carry weight on the international stage. Because as I said this morning, we must acknowledge that today Europe makes declarations, tweets and statements, but we are completely absent from Gaza, completely absent from Iran, and worse still, absent from our own continent, in Ukraine.

When the President of the United States meets the Russian president to discuss the future of Ukraine without any European representative present, and when European representatives have the immense pleasure of being invited to the White House to listen like pupils to Professor Trump's lesson, that is the perfect illustration that the well-meaning souls demonstrating today outside the BEDEX show, you know, that military trade fair where, of course, many people condemn it, and you've indeed seen part of the press trying to cast a shadow of suspicion around this fair, these people will be the first to cry the day their comfort begins to be threatened.

So yes, today we must dare to say that we need to make military investments, that we need to structure our armed forces and that we need to be serious enough to be invited to every table. Saying this doesn't mean I love war, it just means I too want peace, and eternal peace. But I have simply observed, like many others, that this peace is in fact not wanted by all regimes worldwide, and so we must, without a doubt, be able to respond to it: respond with technological superiority and the capacity to act.

The third area where we absolutely must change things is ensuring that the European Union once again has major unifying projects for the future.

We are at the origin of Ariane, of Airbus. Airbus today is the world leader in civil aviation. What have we done in recent years? A bit of accounting, some budgeting and a cap on the bottle. Is that what passes for great European innovations?

To do this, we must get our companies to merge and stop thinking in terms of national markets. We must think of the global market in which Europe must play a role. Decisions such as those that led to the cancellation of the Alstom-Siemens merger cannot happen again in the future. If Europe had a single champion manufacturing locomotives, what was the problem? Today the competition is not between a German and a French manufacturer. It is between a Canadian, a Chinese and a European manufacturer. That is the reality we live in.

And so as a liberal, more than ever I defend the market economy. An open economy. But if you're in favour of an open economy, you can't go to the poker table without chips. If we defend an open economy, we must also defend European strategies on industrial matters, to be able to compete with the best. And these two elements are not contradictory. Not at all. Because it will force us to be the best in the world and thus benefit consumers, research, technology and industry.

I wanted to thank all the teams. I want to tell you how proud I am of what the Centre Jean Gol has become. And we will continue.

I would like to thank all the staff of the Centre Jean Gol for having made our think tank, and I'm not afraid to say it, certainly today the most effective think tank among all the country's political parties. I would also like to thank the teams of the Federal Foreign Affairs Department and the Egmont Palace for welcoming us to this magnificent venue.

I of course wanted to thank you for turning out in such numbers today, it was truly very impressive, but in my view it also proves that this subject is a genuine concern for our fellow citizens, just as love for Europe is far more present than we think.

Loving Europe today means wanting to reform it, sometimes criticising some of its policies or structures. This is certainly not scepticism: on the contrary, it is about ensuring that this European Union remains the most beautiful political innovation in history.

I wish you an excellent evening and a very good weekend. Thank you very much.