Foreign minister puts pressure on Emmanuel Macron amid doubts over US’s commitment to European defence

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France needs to boost its defence spending to make European self-sufficiency a reality, Germany’s foreign minister has said.

As European powers increasingly acknowledge they may be left on their own for their defence as the transatlantic relationship with the US president, Donald Trump, comes under strain, Johann Wadephul said Paris needed to put its money where its mouth was.

“He repeatedly and correctly refers to our pursuit of European sovereignty,” Wadephul said of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in an interview with the German public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk. “Anyone who talks about it needs to act accordingly in their own country.”