French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday sought to showcase European military cooperation in France’s annual Bastille Day parade, with key EU leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, joining him in Paris to watch the parade down the Champs-Elysees.
The annual parade commemorates the July 14, 1789, storming of the Bastille fortress in Paris during the French Revolution.
About 4,300 members of the armed forces, including regiments from other European armies, marched down the avenue’s famed cobblestones in a tradition that dates back to the aftermath of World War I.
Photo: AFP
Army dogs festooned with medals, members of France’s celebrated Foreign Legion and mounted cavalry in glittering uniforms brandishing ceremonial sabers all paraded in front of the high-ranking guests.
Meanwhile, French inventor and entrepreneur Franky Zapata showed off his futuristic flyboard, soaring above the Champs-Elysees and the assembled leaders.
“The army is transforming: It is modernizing for our soldiers, our sovereignty and our independence,” Macron told France 2 television in brief remarks.
Standing in an open-top command car alongside France’s chief of staff General Francois Lecointre, Macron was met with some jeers and whistles from supporters of the “yellow vest” movement who have staged weekly protests against the government since last fall.
Two prominent members of the movement, Jerome Rodrigues and Maxime Nicolle, were detained by the police.
Closer European defense cooperation has been one of Macron’s key foreign policy aims and the president shows no sign of wavering, despite growing political turbulence in Germany and Britain’s looming exit from the EU.
Macron, who pushed the idea of the European Intervention Initiative to undertake missions outside of existing structures like NATO, insisted on the importance of European defense cooperation.
“Never, since the end of World War II has Europe been so important,” Macron said in a written statement.
Merkel told reporters after the event that the parade was a “great gesture for a European defense policy” and Germany was “honored” to have taken part.
Forces from all nine countries taking part alongside France in the initiative were represented at the parade. A German A400M transport plane and a Spanish C130 took part in fly-bys, as well as two British Chinook helicopters.
Also present were members of the 5,000-strong Franco-German Brigade, which was created in 1989 as a symbol of postwar unity.
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