The US is drawing European states into a \u201ccrusade\u201d against Russia, which goes against Europe\u2019s interests, former French Prime Minister Francois Fillon has said. Speaking to French media, he stressed that Europe now is dependent on Washington.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, Europe is not independent\u2026 The US is drawing us [the EU] into a crusade against Russia, which contradicts the interests of Europe,\u201d Fillon told the BFMTV channel.<\/p>\n
The ex-French prime minister, who served in Nicolas Sarkozy\u2019s government from 2007 till 2012, lashed out at Washington and its policies.<\/p>\n
Washington, Fillon said, pursues \u201cextremely dangerous\u201d policies in the Middle East that the EU and European states have to agree with.<\/p>\n
He accused German intelligence of spying on France \u201cnot in the interests of Germany but in the interests of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fillon pointed out that Washington is pressurizing Germany to concede to Greece and find a compromise.<\/p>\n
He noted the \u201cAmerican justice system\u201d often interferes with the work of \u201cEuropean justice systems.\u201d<\/p>\n
“Europe is not independent,\u201d the ex-PM said, calling for \u201ca broad debate on how Europe can regain its independence.\u201d<\/p>\n
This, however, would not be possible if Europe goes ahead and signs the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a proposed EU-US treaty, which has drawn much criticism for its secretiveness and lack of accountability.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am definitely against signing this agreement [TTIP] in the form in which it is now,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The TTIP agreement seeks to formalize the economic relationship between the EU and US economies across the board. The two partners trade nearly \u20ac1 billion (US$1.1 billion) worth of goods and services annually.<\/p>\n
Its supporters promise \u20ac100 billion in GDP growth for the EU and almost $90-billion growth for the US, as well as the creation of over 700,000 extra jobs in the US. However, TTIP critics warn the deal would create environmental problems, a loss of economic sovereignty, bring in torrents of genetically modified food and cause unemployment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US is drawing European states into a \u201ccrusade\u201d against Russia, which goes against Europe\u2019s interests, former French Prime Minister Francois Fillon has said. Speaking to French media, he stressed that Europe now is dependent on Washington. \u201cToday, Europe is not independent\u2026 The US is drawing us [the EU] into a crusade against Russia, which … Continue reading “‘US drawing Europe into crusade against Russia, against our interests’”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":19369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,3],"tags":[12253,534,51,66,11653,7484,1638],"class_list":["post-19368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-news","tag-europe","tag-france","tag-germany","tag-russia","tag-ttip","tag-ukraine","tag-us"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/fillon.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19368"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19370,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19368\/revisions\/19370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}