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 in a traditional New Year address designed to spell out France's foreign policy priorities for the 12 months ahead.
"Multilateral institutions are functioning less and less effectively," Macron said in his annual speech to French ambassadors gathered at the Élysée Palace in Paris. "We are living in a world of great powers with a real temptation to divide up the world," he added.
Macron's speech comes as European powers scramble to come up with a coordinated response to Washington's increasingly assertive foreign policy in the Western hemisphere, including its capture of Venezuela's leader Nicolas Maduro and President Donald Trump's designs on Greenland.
The French president also touched on ongoing efforts to secure a ceasefire in Russia's war on Ukraine, days after he pledged to put French boots on the ground to safeguard Ukraine's security in the event of a peace deal.
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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