FRENCH President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that the United States was “breaking free from international rules” and “gradually turning away” from some of its allies.
Macron delivered his annual speech to French ambassadors at the Elysee Palace as European powers are scrambling to come up with a coordinated response to assertive US foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere following Washington’s capture of Venezuela’s leader Nicolas Maduro and Donald Trump’s designs on Greenland.
“The United States is an established power, but one that is gradually turning away from some of its allies and breaking free from international rules that it was still promoting recently,” Macron told ambassadors at the Elysee Palace.
“Multilateral institutions are functioning less and less effectively,” Macron added.
“We are living in a world of great powers with a real temptation to divide up the world.”
Macron spoke after US special forces snatched Maduro and his wife from Venezuela on Saturday in a lightning raid and whisked them to New York, sparking condemnation that the United States was undermining international law.
In the wake of his military intervention in Venezuela, President Trump set off alarm bells in Europe by repeating his insistence that he wants to take control of Greenland.
Trump has repeatedly refused to rule out using force to seize the strategic Arctic island, prompting shock and anger from the controlling power, Denmark, and other longstanding European allies.
The French leader said “global governance” was key in a time when “everyday people wonder whether Greenland is going to be invaded” as well as whether “Canada will face the threat of becoming the 51st state”.
He said it was the right moment to “reinvest fully in the United Nations, as we note its largest shareholder no longer believes in it.”
The White House on Wednesday flagged the US exit from 66 global organisations and treaties — roughly half affiliated with the United Nations, it identified as “contrary to the interests of the United States”.
Macron said Europe must protect its interests and urged the “consolidation” of European regulation of the tech sector.
He stressed the importance of safeguarding academic independence and hailed “the possibility of having a controlled information space where opinions can be exchanged completely freely, but where choices are not made by the algorithms of a few.”
Brussels has adopted a powerful legal arsenal aimed at reining in tech giants namely through its Digital Markets Act (DMA), which covers competition, and the Digital Services Act (DSA) on content moderation.
Washington has denounced the tech rules as an attempt to “coerce” American social media platforms into censoring viewpoints they oppose.
“The DSA and DMA are two regulations that must be defended,” Macron said.
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US Detains Former Ghanaian Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta
GHANA’s former finance minister, who is wanted at home on suspicion of corruption, has been detained by US immigration, his lawyers said.
Ken Ofori-Atta, 66, has been in the United States since January last year to receive medical treatment including prostate cancer surgery.
The former minister, who was declared a fugitive last February and was formally charged with corruption in November, has applied to extend his stay in the US, his lawyers said late Wednesday.
They said the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) took Ofori-Atta into custody on Tuesday over “the status of his current stay in the United States”.
“His US legal team is in contact with ICE and expects the matter to be resolved expeditiously,” the statement added, stressing that Ofori-Atta was cooperating fully with immigration authorities.
ICE’s online database listed Ofori-Atta as being held at a facility in the US state of Virginia.
Ofori-Atta served as finance minister from 2017 to 2024 under former president Nana Akufo-Addo and oversaw contentious tax reforms and negotiations with the International Monetary Fund.