Our transatlantic partnership gave generations the chance to live freer than those who came before them  

Good morning. It is great to be here at Stanford. I know that, for some of you, finals are just a few weeks away, so thank you for making the time - and good luck to you!

I have come to the Bay Area for meetings with politicians, tech companies and leaders, on AI, trade, and how we shape the decade ahead in ways that serve our open, democratic societies.

And so it feels right to be starting here, on this campus, where thinking and creating are one and the same, and where the next big idea that changes everything might be in this room right now.

You know better than most that American innovation was never built in isolation. This university, this valley, have been shaped by the deep current of talent, ideas, and human enterprise, flowing between Europe and the United States. From the European-born pioneers whose work laid the foundations of the computing age, to the engineers who crossed the Atlantic and carried the first humans to the moon, to the trailblazers who found here in Silicon Valley the capital, the culture, and the freedom to build without boundaries. And that story is still being written today.

Our partnership has always been defined by this exchange, of people, ideas, and values moving back and forth across the Atlantic. And it goes well beyond innovation. Together, we built the architecture of the modern economy, created the institutions that kept the peace, and gave generations the chance to live freer than those who came before them.

The relationship between Europe and the United States is the most successful in modern history. And I am here this week to make the case that deepening it, based on our same value- based outlook, means it will work better for our people - and that matters more now than it has in a very long time.

We are living through a moment people will one day study and write about. We see it with the technological revolution that is reshaping every aspect of our lives. With the conflicts that are challenging the world order we thought we knew. With the pressure on our democracies from those who would see them fail. This is a moment that calls for big, bold and - yes - difficult decisions. A moment where the stakes of getting it wrong could hardly be higher.

Our way - the way of free, democratic, open societies - has to deliver results. For families who need to pay their bills. For people who want to know their jobs will still be there next year. For communities that want to feel safe. For students stepping into a world that feels less certain than the one their parents inherited.

Because if our way does not answer the questions people are asking of us, we shouldn’t be surprised if they look elsewhere. We have seen what happens when we fall short: people retreating toward the comfort of extremes, finding something compelling in those who promise to tear everything down and offer simple, false solutions to a world that is far more complicated.

For too long, established political forces ignored those warning signs. We explained them away. We stayed silent when we should have been countering the narrative. That has to change.

We have to give people a reason to vote for something, not merely against something. We have to show, with results that people can see and feel, that building together delivers more than tearing down.

And the most powerful demonstration we have, the one that has been proving this case for generations, is our transatlantic partnership. It has always been, at its core, a promise to our people: that working together we can deliver the security, the prosperity, and the freedom that no single country could guarantee alone. That promise has held. It must keep holding. And right now, we have three ways to make good on that promise.

The first is technology. When economists look at where growth will come from over the next ten years, the answer is consistently the same: digital innovation, technology, and the industries built around them. This is where the future is being decided.
But let me be very frank: for a good number of years, Europe took its eye off the ball. We watched a generation of innovators leave, watched companies that started in European universities scale somewhere else. That was a wake-up call. And Europe has certainly woken up. We have been cutting red tape, simplifying our rules, investing in energy and infrastructure, and connecting trillions of euros in European savings to the innovators who need them.

And those efforts are starting to pay off. Yann LeCun, Arthur Mensch of Mistral AI, people who could go anywhere, they are choosing Europe. Now, when I meet founders in Warsaw, Tallinn, Paris, and Amsterdam, the question has changed: it is no longer whether to leave. It is how fast they can scale at home. Silicon Valley will always be Silicon Valley. That culture of dreaming big, of taking risks, of ordinary people investing and taking ownership of their financial futures, that is something Europe is still learning. But we are moving in the right direction - in our own way, but with the urgency that this moment requires.

There is an old saying that “America innovates while Europe regulates.” It is catchy, but, at best, it is outdated. Everyone is grappling with the same questions. How do you harness technologies that move faster than our ability to govern them? How do you protect people from misuse, from disinformation that is already distorting democratic processes, from privacy risks that are real and growing, without extinguishing the very innovation you are trying to foster?

Last year alone, American states enacted 145 AI-related bills. One AI company even paused the release of one of its own models because they were worried about the risks. That instinct is because technology only delivers if people trust it, and right now that trust is fragile: 57% of Americans say the societal risks of AI are high - that’s more than in Europe. That should make us all stop and think. How we govern these technologies today will determine whether they serve democracy or undermine it, whether they empower people or leave them behind. The standards we set now will echo for generations, and they will be stronger, more legitimate, and more durable if Europe and the United States set them together.

The second dimension of our partnership is trade. The transatlantic economy generates over 8 trillion euros - almost 10 trillion dollars - in commercial sales every year, supports 16 million jobs, and accounts for a third of global GDP.

In goods, in services, in investment, in research, in the supply chains that connect our factories and laboratories and financial centres, there is no economic relationship in history that even comes close.

What businesses on both sides of the Atlantic need, especially in the current climate, is predictability. The confidence to invest, to hire, to plan ahead without wondering what comes next. And there is good news on that front: last week the European Parliament approved the terms of the EU-US trade agreement, and in a matter of days we will be voting it through. It is a new footing for the relationship, built on mutual respect and shared interest. Trade wars are good for nobody, and this is a win for all of us. Tomorrow, I will be meeting European companies operating here in the United States, and I know this is what they have been waiting to hear. When one side of the Atlantic grows stronger, so does the other. That is how this relationship has always worked.

And that brings me to the third pillar, the one that makes all the others possible: freedom, peace and stability, and our ability to guarantee them together in a world that is less predictable than before.

Here I want to say a word about Iran, and I want to begin by saluting the courage of the Iranian people. Those demanding dignity and liberty need to know that Europe hears them. For 47 years, the Iranian regime has weaponised theocracy to repress women, hang dissidents from cranes, fund proxies spreading terror across the Middle East, and massacre thousands whose only crime was to stand up and be counted. I know discussions are close, but in whatever scenario, I keep those 92 million people at the forefront of my thoughts.

We are seeing now how instability in the Gulf does not stay in the Gulf. How it travels through energy prices, supply chains, and the cost of living that families and businesses on both sides of the Atlantic are already feeling. Restoring that stability requires working together, as we always have when it has mattered most.

I know we can rise to this. Because we already have. On a February morning in 2022, tanks crossed into Ukraine in an attempt to redraw the map of Europe by force. It was a direct challenge to everything that Europe and the United States had built together since the Second World War. The question it posed was simple: do our commitments hold when it counts? They held, because we held together. We stood with Ukraine from the first day, and we stand with Ukraine still. We are committed to a just and lasting peace. Not a pause before the next assault, but a settlement that is fair, that holds, and that makes the world safer. That requires Europe and America to stay aligned, stay serious, and resist shortcuts that would leave everyone more exposed. That is based on the principle of nothing about Ukraine, without Ukraine.

At the same time, Europe understands that the security we once took for granted was never self-sustaining, and that the United States should not be asked to carry that burden alone.

European countries are now moving towards NATO’s defence target of 5% of GDP. We are investing more, producing more, and taking responsibility for our own security in ways that would have seemed unthinkable just a few years ago. This is the commitment of our political generation, and we will not be found wanting. Think about what our transatlantic partnership has already delivered. How it rebuilt a continent from rubble. How it held firm through the long years of the Cold War. How it carried human beings to the moon and created the computing age. How it underwrote decades of peace and liberty that previous generations could only have dreamed of. None of that was inevitable.

None of it was given. It happened because two continents, sharing values and a sense of common purpose, chose again and again, in the easy moments and the hard ones, to act together. To push democracy forward.

That is the spirit this moment demands. People on both sides of the Atlantic want the same things: good jobs, a sense of security, lives they can afford, and the hope that their children will have it a little better than they did. Our way exists to deliver that - as it always has, when we have had the courage to defend it, and to face the future together rather than apart.

So, this is my pitch - my vision for our great continents - and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Thank you.