// LEADERS' VIEWS
EMMANUEL MACRON, PRESIDENT, FRANCE
France calls for renewed global cooperation M ajor transformation is... underway for us all across
that to also help countries to finance education, health care, [to stabilise] food security and help them to address challenges of biodiversity and the climate. Let us come off the horns of a dilemma. We don’t need to choose between growth, climate change and biodiversity – we can do everything if we mobilise private and public financing within a framework that brings together... West, East, North and South. … We need to mobilise more private financing to accompany transitions in middle-income countries, developing countries and the poorest nations. We must develop guarantee mechanisms [so] that losses will be covered, and we need to mobilise more private financing to help those countries and help them to grow. That is vital. Whatever the ill winds that blow, [we will] continue to mobilise to stop biodiversity loss and help the climate. … Together we were able to notch up victories recently – the Nice Treaty that entered into force. Through collective rallying we finally have a regulation framework for our oceans. That was something we’d been waiting for, for decades. The same collective mobilisation is what we must see on plastic. We need to develop an international treaty that aims to put an end to plastic pollution. The same mobilisation is what we need to have to mobilise biodiversity credits and give more consistency to our carbon credits … France and Europe will be at that meeting and we will be in step with the 2030 goals. We will mobilise all financing necessary to usher in this transition, whether that be public or private financing. We have no right to turn away, stray from the course and the goals we set ourselves. We have no right to simply crumble and become isolated … Education, health care, agriculture, food security, biodiversity, climate – the fight ultimately against all inequalities that destabilise our global order requires the same spirit of cooperation, the same spirit that I talked about, the spirit that we showed in the face of war and destabilisation. Address to the United Nations General Assembly, 23 September 2025. Transcription of the simultaneous translation provided by the United Nations.
productive capacities that China has been able to develop in recent years... [are] conducted hand in hand with harmonious development and respect for the environment? How can we correct US trade imbalances? How can we do that through corrective measures, not through tariffs that [pull] the rug out from under international
the globe. Climate change is not under control; biodiversity is collapsing; efforts that the majority of us are ready to make are coming up against the obstacles of the cynicism of a few that can make a difference but refuse to do just that. And we see
technologies picking up pace. They pave the way to horizons of opportunity but they also pave the way for dangerous forces, dangerous because they are not regulated. Global trade is weathering tariff wars, and that’s another form of imbalance, globally speaking. Alarm bells are ringing out loud, but that doesn’t extinguish hope… Ukraine is staying the course, and peace is possible in the Great Lakes regions. We’ve also adopted treaties [and] ambitious agreements that some people thought were impossible: a treaty on pandemics, a treaty to protect the high seas, another to finance development. The world’s complexities are not a reason to throw in the towel on our principles and our ambitions… Let us stare straight into the face of global imbalances, all economies affected, all economies (and I’m speaking as one of the richest among them), but also middle-income countries, developing countries and, of course, the poorest nations among us. All of us, if we can’t have organised international debate on major global imbalances, if our response is a fragmented one and we don’t work together, we exacerbate these problems. Today our challenge is to look at how we can help China to develop the internal demand that it really needs. How can we ensure that the
trade? ... Europe ... needs to respond to collective needs for collective investment and we need to shoulder that responsibility. These challenges mean that we need to cooperate. There needs to be cooperation between major economies, but we can’t pit the G7 against the BRICS, and that’s the very rationale behind the French G7 [presidency] of 2026. Of course, we’ll work with the [current] Canadian presidency of the G7 and the coming [US] presidency of the G20. We need to return to that spirit of cooperation that is vital because that is what will allow us to have a common agenda to finance our global challenges. Let’s take a look at things today. Everywhere we are reducing and eroding our common ambitions to finance major global challenges. Collective financing for health care is plummeting, as is financing for food security, as is financing for education. These challenges [were], however, our challenges even more than they were before the … Covid-19 pandemic, and so it is absolutely pivotal that together we prove ourselves able to develop concrete solutions and find new financing to address our challenges … Together we need to work together better to address global economic imbalances. We must develop an agenda of growth everywhere, but we must do
16 // G20 SOUTH AFRICA: THE JOHANNESBURG SUMMIT 2025
Made with FlippingBook - PDF hosting