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Speaker 1: Catherine, how are you doing well?

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Speaker 2: Less reassured, Mike.

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Speaker 1: See, under normal circumstances, what Macron said today would be

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Speaker 1: I think globally significant. It probably still is just not

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Speaker 1: getting quite the global headlines for obvious reasons. Did this

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Speaker 1: thing come out of nowhere? Or has this been well signaled?

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Speaker 2: It had been signaled. The thing is, for each presidential term,

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Speaker 2: a president announces to the nation what the nuclear deterrant is?

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Speaker 2: This of course now very different. He gave his last

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Speaker 2: five six years ago. What's happened since then? While we've

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Speaker 2: got the war in Ukraine And as President Macron said

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Speaker 2: this speech just a few hours ago, he said, there

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Speaker 2: is a weakening of arms control and nuclear proliferation. The

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Speaker 2: other big question, of course, that he come up with,

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Speaker 2: can Europe still be guaranteed of its security by the US?

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Speaker 2: Will the Trump administration guarantee Europe's stability and European security? Well,

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Speaker 2: at the start of the speech he was sort of

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Speaker 2: thank the US and been a good ally. But I

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Speaker 2: think by the end of it the question had been

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Speaker 2: answered that now it was up to the Europeans. You

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Speaker 2: said very clearly your Europe has to take this now

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Speaker 2: by the horns. It cannot talk about the possibility of

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Speaker 2: America not being a reliable ally. So what he came

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Speaker 2: up with was outlines of what's going to happen. So

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Speaker 2: there's going to be an increase in the number of

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Speaker 2: nuclear warheads. That's the first time that's going to happen

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Speaker 2: in decades. Looking further down at other aspects, one thing

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Speaker 2: that's really important is in the past, France has said

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Speaker 2: they needed to keep enough warheads sufficiency, strict sufficiency. That's

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Speaker 2: now gone. That is now we don't know what the

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Speaker 2: numbers will be, but that will no longer be just sufficiency.

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Speaker 2: The other thing that has changed, specifically the concept of

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Speaker 2: unacceptable damage. Now now that's apparently gone in favor of

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Speaker 2: a broader, quite vague criteria, which will be that an

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Speaker 2: opposing state must not be able to recover from a

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Speaker 2: French strike. So a lot of changes there. What we

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Speaker 2: don't know what has been vague on detail, how many

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Speaker 2: nuclear warheads. He talked a lot about the nuclear umbrella.

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Speaker 2: He's now going to make it available to other countries

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Speaker 2: such as Germany and Poland. No idea about how that's

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Speaker 2: going to work, because what he did say was there

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Speaker 2: will only ever be a French finger on that button.

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Speaker 2: They will not hand over sovereignty of their nuclear deterrence.

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Speaker 2: So how that will work if, for example, the Germans

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Speaker 2: or the Poles say, look, we now think there's an

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Speaker 2: existential threat, what's going to be the process for doing that?

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Speaker 2: So very clear, very shocking to hear this, but of

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Speaker 2: course this is as you said, this is the world

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Speaker 2: we now live in. He says he has to protect

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Speaker 2: the French people for what they are facing. And one

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Speaker 2: of the other things he said was be aware that

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Speaker 2: this war could reach our borders.

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Speaker 1: Exactly, that was my expression. So how immersed is France?

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Speaker 1: I mean your stharmcen and defense and bases and stuff,

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Speaker 1: WREZ France and for that metal was Germany.

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Speaker 2: Again, well, here's the big problem. You know, Iran could

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Speaker 2: launch missiles as far as Germany and Italy that's next door.

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Speaker 2: So that does tend.

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Speaker 1: To concern people.

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Speaker 2: And that's not just concern about oil prices or gas prices,

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Speaker 2: and this does concern people. So the other problem, of

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Speaker 2: course that France has is over the years it's built

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Speaker 2: up defence ties with places in the golf. They do

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Speaker 2: have bases in the golf. We saw over the weekend

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Speaker 2: that a French military based there was attacked. No soldiers

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Speaker 2: were effective. That they do have bases there. They've been

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Speaker 2: selling their fighter jets to these countries, they've been training them,

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Speaker 2: they've been doing the repair work, they've got workshops there

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Speaker 2: for these. So they are heavily dependent on these countries,

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Speaker 2: not just for your gas and for petroleum products, but

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Speaker 2: also they've been selling their wares there and they're quite

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Speaker 2: heavily involved there. So the French Foreign ministers said early

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Speaker 2: Monday morning that France was not involved in this at

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Speaker 2: the start, it was not warned about this, but it

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Speaker 2: will do what it can to protect its own interest

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Speaker 2: in the region.

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Speaker 1: And you got guess problems of course overnight because guitar

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Speaker 1: got hit in the LNG. And mind you you've been

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Speaker 1: through all this before with Ukraine, haven't you.

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Speaker 2: Well that's right. With Ukraine, that really did sort of

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Speaker 2: shock Europe into action. But you would have thought with

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Speaker 2: that that the amount of lp LNG that Europe used

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Speaker 2: would diminish. Alas no, if you look at it since

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Speaker 2: twenty eighteen that the EU has imported double the amount

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Speaker 2: of LNG, so they really haven't moved away from it.

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Speaker 2: And France don't forget is the largest importer of LNG

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Speaker 2: in the EU, but there is still Norway on the

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Speaker 2: doorstet which provides a lot of the LNG two Europe.

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Speaker 2: But again you're looking at price is going up just

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Speaker 2: at a time when Europe's economies were having a little.

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Speaker 1: Bit of growth, and it's inflationary of course. Catherine, nice

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Speaker 1: to catch up. We'll see in a couple of days.

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Speaker 1: Catherine Field out of France this morning.

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