French president Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday, 22 September 2026, in his final address to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly that countries must resist a “return to the law of the jungle” in international relations, at a moment when “the rhetoric of defeat” is “giving way to abuse of power by empires”.

“The question put to us, in very simple terms, is whether we want to live in this state of nature, with a kind of return to the law of the jungle, or in a civilised international society,” he said, according to France 24, which carried the speech with AFP, and DW. On Gaza, Macron hammered the rostrum and said “the scenes, the spectacle, it is shameful. Shame on all of us”: “What is our credibility worth if we remain inactive on Gaza? Some claim that peace has been achieved, but this has not opened up humanitarian deliveries.” He said respect for the “legitimate rights” of the Palestinian people is a “prerequisite for security” for Palestinians and for Israel, and that “all those who claim that Israel’s security requires the violation of the sovereignty of all of its neighboring states are making a very fateful error”. On Ukraine, he proposed a “double moratorium”: an end to strikes by both sides on energy and civilian infrastructure, and a matching commitment in the Black Sea to allow “grain shipments” to flow. “Winter is coming,” he said. Turning to artificial intelligence (AI), he called on countries to pool resources to build an “open-source frontier model” independent of “one of the great powers”: “I don’t want anyone to become the vassal of one of the great powers,” he said, naming India, Brazil, Singapore, African nations and the Gulf states as possible partners.