Emmanuel Macron made an impassioned plea for a stronger Europe. Not everyone wanted to hear it.

UK and Union flags.
(Image credit: Daniel Leal-Olivas / Stringer / Getty Images)

French President Emmanuel Macron made an ardent case for a stronger, more unified Europe in an op-ed published in outlets across all 28 EU member states ahead of the looming Brexit deadline and European parliamentary elections. But the call for unity received anything but a cohesive response from individual governments. Some old friends offered praise, enemies pounced, and others just rolled their eyes.

In the piece, Macron proposed, among other things, the creation of a European Agency for the Protection of Democracies to protect elections across the continent from cyber-attacks, a common European border force, and a European Climate Bank to finance energy transition processes. He also made more emotional requests for voters to reject nationalism, writing that it is Europe, not the nation-state, that "unites, frees, and protects us."

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.