The Ukraine war, France's EU Council Presidency and Europes security relationship
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Russia's ongoing war against Ukraine has brought an unexpected twist to France's Presidential election and its coordinating role as the rotating Presidency of the Council of the EU. Although President Emmanuel Macron won the first round of the election, the unexpected strength shown by his far-right opponent Marine LePen also highlights the domestic and international political, security and defence challenges with which France continues to wrestle with.\\xa0
In this episode, Lucinda Creighton is joined by Tara Varma to discuss how Russia's invasion of Ukraine has influenced the recent first round of the French Presidential election and the French Council of the EU Presidency. Tara Varma is a senior policy fellow and head of the Paris office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, where she follows French foreign policy and European and Asian security developments. She looks particularly at current French defence and security proposals in the European framework. She is also interested in Asian security, and the role Europeans could play in it, notably in the Indo-Pacific region. Varma joined ECFR in January 2015 as a coordinator and then deputy head of the Paris office.