“The world is made up of herbivores and carnivores. This Thursday, November 7, French President Emmanuel Macron visited Budapest, Hungary, at the summit of the European Political Community. On this occasion, in the wake of the Donald Trump’s victory at theAmerican presidential electionEmmanuel Macron underlined his determination to assert the power of the Old Continent by invoking the metaphor of the “geopolitical herbivores and carnivores”.. “If we decide to remain herbivores, the carnivores will win.”said the French president. He continued: “I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea to choose to be omnivores.” But where does this image come from, and what does it mean?

In France, this animal metaphor has been regularly quoted since 2020 by the former Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs, Hubert Védrine. “We are geopolitical herbivores, in a world of geopolitical carnivores. Soon we’ll be vegans, and we’ll end up as prey.”he declared in January 2020 at a lecture given by the Chair of Major Contemporary Strategic Issues at Paris’s Pantheon Sorbonne University. A few months later, in 2021, in front of preparatory class students at the prestigious Lycée Sainte-Geneviève in Versailles, he reiterated his remarks, specifying that herbivores are “we Europeans. Later, in the media, he reused the phrase several times.

A quote borrowed from a German minister

But Hubert Védrine has never concealed the fact that he did not originate the expression. Interviewed on Sud Radio in February 2022, he confided that he had borrowed a “formula of a great German minister”, quoting the former Federal Foreign Minister and now Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, without certainty. “I’m not sure who the minister is, but I’m sure it’s a German minister.”he added. In reality, the expression “geopolitical herbivores and carnivores” was first used in 2018 by German Social Democrat Sigmar Gabriel.

With this image, Emmanuel Macron criticizes Europe’s position vis-à-vis our American and Chinese neighbors. Rather than remaining “under the thumb” of the United States, particularly in terms of defense, Europe should be asserting its power, all the more so in the wake of Donald Trump’s re-election, which envisages a worldwide trade war. In the words of the French president: “I have no desire to leave Europe as a formidable theater inhabited by herbivores that carnivores, according to their agenda, will come to devour.”

For him, Europe must not be afraid of words, and its leaders must all “become aware” that it is a question of“an unrivalled geopolitical power”.. “We simply don’t see ourselves as a fully independent power. We think we need to delegate our geopolitics to the United States of America, that we should delegate our growth model to our Chinese customers, that we should delegate our technological innovation to American “hyperscalers”. It’s not the best idea.concluded the Chairman.