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Photo Credit: MAuro Bottaro“I DEEPLY BELIEVE THAT EUROPE MUST BE A PIONEER OF AN EFFECTIVE AND EQUITABLE ECOLOGICAL TRANSITION ”Pictured: Emmanuel Macronaccomplish this, but starting today let us move forward. Europe must spearhead this energy transition, and it needs this ambition – this unified market – to build this model.This European ambition must of course not be solely defensive. That is the reason I am also proposing that a European industrial support programme be established for clean vehicles and that common infrastructure be deployed to make it possible to cross Europe without damaging it. We need new large-scale projects and this is one that will reconcile our core industrial ambitions in the area.A Europe that ensures our demanding vision of sustainable development is also a Europe of food safety and sovereignty, and I have deliberately placed this ambition here. We must ask ourselves the right questions, without taboos: is our Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) protecting our farmers and our consumers? I look back at recent years, I do not completely have the feeling that it is, and we have come to this paradoxical situation in which the CAP has become a French taboo while our farmers continue to criticise the way it works.Agricultural policy should not be a policy which over-administers all the European Union regions, all the sectors; and quite often an income policy roughly accompanying the transition and producing at times complex plans that we have trouble explaining to our peoples.European agricultural policy must make it possible for farmers to make a decent living and protect them from market vagaries and major crises; it must help them evolve over time and build responsible agriculture. There will always be several agricultural models in Europe and I would like to see every country be able to support this transformation on the basis of their ambitions and preferences. And this new Common Agricultural Policy, so as not to be bureaucratic and unfair, must be the instrument of agricultural transition, of our sovereignty in the face of the major challenges of globalisation. It must restore vitality and ambition to our rural regions.In other words, I would like us to engage with assurance and originality in a Common Agricultural Policy with two important objectives: protecting us from these considerable risks and volatile global markets that could threaten Europe’s food sovereignty; and promoting the major European agricultural transition and giving countries more flexibility in organising their regions and sectors, reducing bureaucracy and, at regional level, allowing for more flexible support for industries, wherever choices are necessary. ■This article is an extract from the speech for a sovereign, united and democratic Europe delivered by Emmanuel Macron, President of the French Republic, on 26 September 2017 in Paris, France. Visit www.diplomatie.gouv.fr for more information.THE G20 MEMBER COUNTRIES 031