 delighted to be joined by Victor Malay. He is a Financial Times Bureau Chief based in Paris. Mr Malay has an extensive career in journalism, spanning over three decades I believe, with coastings in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia. So a welcome experience to draw on today. You're very welcome to dub him and we look forward to hearing your views on the future of Europe and indeed the role of France in this debate. I might just start with a broad question. The new institutions are not in office in Brussels, marking the start of a new legislative term. What areas do you think France will live to prioritize over the next five years? I think France, what it really wants to do with Europe, what Macron wants to do with Europe, and then the Macron the President, is to keep the European Union sort of very focused on its role as a potential superpower, particularly economic superpower, because of the strategic and trade confrontations that it faces, particularly with the US and particularly with China. So I think that the sort of French vision is of a bloc that is not completely united obviously, but has a very strong common voice on issues, particularly of trade and particularly of strategy, defence and security. And that's kind of everything else that they talk about goes around that, whether it's defence policy or strengthening the eurozone and so on. So all those things sort of go into that vision that Macron has and he is quite a sort of strategic thinker. He does tend to think big thoughts about what he wants Europe to do and he came up in 2017 just after he was elected with a very long list of sort of common European projects in a whole bunch of areas including migration, the economy and defence and so on. Just touching on migration, this is something Macron has adopted an increasingly tough stance on. Do you think it's conceivable that he will be able to forge some kind of consensus on a common aside on migration policy of the next five years? In Europe, I think the answer is yes, because it's not only him. I think all the European governments have kind of realised that this is not quite as easy as they thought. You remember Angela Merkel famously invited in a million people from Syria and the Middle East and basically it turned out to be not something that was going to work that easily. So Macron, on the one hand, he is part of a group of social liberas if you like who have come around to the idea that you do actually need to control immigration much more than it's been controlled currently. And France has a particular problem that it is the destination for a lot of asylum seekers and so it does have quite a large flow of people who are either illegal or haven't yet been granted asylum and may not be granted asylum because they're coming from places where they're not necessarily being persecuted. So there is a kind of domestic political agenda that he has as well which is that he's competing against the extreme right, the Rassom-Romon, a Senator of Marine Le Pen and her big thing is immigration and how it should be stopped and controlled. And so Macron is leaning a bit more towards that direction. That doesn't mean he's abandoned all his liberal ideas but he is, for the last year or so, he has been talking much more about controlling migration and that translates into his approach to European policy which is now a little bit more in line than it was with someone for example the East European countries. And just to touch there on his approach to European policy, he's been referred to recently as a bit of a disrupter. Can you tell us a little bit about his approach to diplomacy and how you think it fits in with the traditional consensus-based decision making indeed? Yeah, I think he is a self-confessed sort of disrupter diplomacy. He talks about audacity or boldness in policy. That's what he does. So when he makes these quite strong statements about NATO suffering from brain death, it's quite a deliberate policy and what he and his advisors say he's trying to do is to essentially shake up people from their complacency. He says it's hypocritical and foolish just to sort of sit there and pretend that NATO is okay when it's not. So his argument would be we're being rational but he definitely has an approach to that that is not always consensual and he's much criticized for example by the Germans and by Angela Merkel for not consulting with his allies when he goes out on a limb and starts talking to Russia for example or running a peace initiative between the Iranians and the Americans. What the other Europeans want is more consultation. They don't necessarily disagree with his analysis of the problem in the case of NATO. There is obviously a strategic problem when you have one or two of the countries doing things on their own. Turkey and the U.S. We've got Hamilton and Syria where Turkey went into Syria and the Americans let them go. There was no consultation with other NATO members. So Macron's approach is to be quite forthright about the problems and his failing, if you look at it from the point of view of the Poles or the Germans, is not to consult enough with his European allies when he says the things that need to be said. So it remains to be seen how successful he's going to be in getting some of his key proposals across the line. Yeah I think that's true. I mean it is a sort of work in progress obviously that the European Union is always in particular is always changing. We have this massive change coming up probably which is Brexit which is going to completely disrupt the way Europe functions the way it's diplomacy and the relations between the big powers in Europe are going to fundamentally change. And France is quite well positioned with its sort of people or Macron's candidates that he at least approves of at the Commission in the European Central Bank and the Council. And he's done quite well in pushing to have people that are sort of France friendly if you like in the Commission and the other institutions of the EU. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. It's been really fascinating. Thank you.