Putin:

We are not, on our side, nationalizing anything yet.

Certain enterprises have been handed over to temporary management.

US Threatens Diesel Export Ban to Force Europe to Release Reserves

US is pressing Paris and Berlin to tap emergency fuel stocks, while seeking 120 million barrels of diesel from EU over six months as Trump weighs export restrictions ahead of midterms.

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Trump:

I stated, numerous times, that it would take 4-6 weeks to get rid of THE IRAN NUCLEAR THREAT, and I did it in one night! The rest of the time is just to make sure it stays that way.

French President Macron:

What allowed our democracies to establish themselves was that we told the middle classes they would live better and better. The idea of progress is therefore attached to our democracies and to this balance.

We stopped keeping the economic promise. That began with deindustrialization. Globalization from the 1990s onward weakened that consensus through waves of relocation.

The promise that the political economy would continuously allow you to live better was no longer being fulfilled.

The great blow was the crisis of 2008–2012. And who paid the bill? The middle classes.

Even in countries that were less affected, some groups have still not fully recovered the purchasing power and living standards they had before that crisis. There was a sense of betrayal.

French President Macron:

There is a crisis of effectiveness in our democracies. We have made our systems more sophisticated, but we have become extremely complex, less understandable and slower.

Checks and balances and independent authorities were created for very good reasons, but they have slowed the ability of our democratic system to act.

That creates impatience in societies that want problems solved very quickly.

This crisis of democratic effectiveness makes our systems less acceptable and creates a fascination with authoritarian regimes or authoritarian systems.

Eritrea says it is severing all diplomatic ties with Ethiopia.

NATO Chief Warns Europe to Prepare for More Russian Sabotage and Arson

Mark Rutte urged European allies to prepare for continued Russian sabotage and arson, while Germany and the Netherlands pledged closer intelligence cooperation.

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French President Macron:

I’m wary of the word "populist," because the word "people" is inside it.

We should not give the impression that the people are wrong or contemptible. I call it demagoguery.

Putin on Russia's economy:

There are some problems to be addressed, but who can boast of not having any problems right now?

French President Macron:

The first answer is to re-humanize social networks. We have to take back control.

We have to take back control of social networks and of the artificial intelligence that is arriving. This is a European battle.

What I call re-humanizing means taking back control, putting everything back at the right pace and making democracy work again.

French President Macron:

Europe has become desynchronized. It is too slow compared with China and the United States.

Europe’s battle for the coming years is to innovate much faster and much more strongly.

Over the last 20 years, in GDP per capita, we have fallen behind the United States, and more than two-thirds of the explanation is that we innovate less.

Artificial intelligence and robotics can be an opportunity because they can give our societies new room for maneuver.

French President Macron:

If I want to weaken your leaders’ ability to support Ukraine, or if I want a particular party to win, I go onto your social networks, push content designed to provoke overreaction, and I can do it with fake accounts.

The madness is allowing masked outside actors to manipulate our democracies and allowing algorithms controlled by a handful of people to manipulate our tastes and choices.

We are crazy. That is not a rational choice for democracies structured like ours.

French President Macron demands:

We want transparency in algorithms. You must explain how content is brought to me, who is favored and who is not.

Ban fake accounts. There can be a legitimate debate about anonymity, but I am radically opposed to there being no real person behind an account on a social network. That is unacceptable.

French President Macron:

I must be able to choose my algorithms. That is what taking back control of social networks means.

As long as we continue holding elections and operating democracies with social networks functioning as they do today, we can complain about national populism, new demagogies and the extremes — but they will continue to emerge.

Putin on Ukraine:

Of course we would've liked to stop it as soon as possible with peaceful negotiations.

They should stop blaming Russia, saying that we don’t want such negotiations.

French President Macron on free speech:

The so-called American "free speech" that some people promote today is the opposite of free speech.

There is no freedom if there is no limit to my freedom beginning with the freedom of others and respect for a common framework.

My freedom cannot mean hitting you, insulting you or destroying the common space for everyone.

French President Macron:

A key factor in European competitiveness was very cheap gas coming from Russia. That ended in 2022.

But our great export market was China. That is over too. Europe now has a trade deficit with China. Today, every day, we lose €1 billion in trade with China.

Two years ago, several countries were still net exporters. Germany, for example, remained a net exporter to China until 2025. That is over — even for Germany.

French President Macron:

The Americans protect their market. The Chinese protect their market. Emerging markets have many barriers, including non-tariff barriers. And we open ourselves to everyone.

If a vehicle arriving in Europe from China or elsewhere has received eight times more subsidies than its European competitor, I say that is not fair.

We must correct the rules of competition.

French President Macron:

When we educate children, we do not send them freely into a supermarket, a sex shop and a gun store. With social networks, that is basically what we did.

We said: great, let them have free access to the supermarket, the sex shop, weapons sales and everything else we normally regulate.

Putin on Ukraine:

If the loss of these territories is unavoidable, does it make sense to cling to this territory?

The problem is not this chunk of land. It's about the people.

We have to create an environment that saves us, not a ceasefire, but rather a durable peace for the long term.