Macron will first receive Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, at the Elysee Palace, for a working lunch, and later both leaders will hold a virtual mini-summit with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in Berlin, and with President of the European Council Charles Michel, and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, both in Brussels.
The meeting, organized a week after the jihadist attacks in Vienna and Nice and the assassination of a French professor in October, will try to mobilize the rest of European leaders in the fight against terrorism and present the first proposals before the Dec.10 European Council.
«We consider this terrorist threat to be a fundamental, severe, serious threat to the values on which the European project is based, and we have no intention of being weak or lax,» Michel said in a previous press conference.
Macron expressed himself in the same vein after the Vienna attack, by ensuring that «we will do all we can, as Europeans, to fight together against this scourge of terrorism,» echoing Merkel’s words, who spoke of a «common fight” in the face of an «attack on our European values.”
Germany, which currently holds the presidency of the European Union, also put the fight against terrorism on the agenda of a meeting of interior ministers on November 27.
rly/aph/mem/acm