European champion Macron gears up for first EU summit

Paris : France's new President Emmanuel Macron heads to his first EU summit on Thursday pledging to breathe new life into the bloc after Britain's shock Brexit decision and to bolster European defences in the face of Donald Trump's "America First" policy.

The 39-year-old takes his place among fellow European Union leaders in Brussels flush from emphatic electoral victories at home, although his post-election honeymoon was upset this week by a high-level cabinet reshuffle that saw the departure of his justice minister Francois Bayrou, a key ally.

Macron was quick to bond with the doyenne of the EU, Germany's Angela Merkel, making a point of visiting her on his maiden foreign trip the day after his May 7 election.

Early this month, Brussels unveiled a Franco-German blueprint for the creation of a European defence fund with an annual budget of 5.5 billion euro ($6.1 billion).

Macron's office said Paris and Berlin, traditionally the twin engines of European integration, hoped their partners would sign off on the defence plan at the two-day summit.

The idea for the fund, which would finance joint military hardware projects including drones as well as pooled research and development, is to help Europe stand alone as a global military power in the face of US President Trump's "America First" policy.

Trump berated his European partners on military spending at a raucous NATO summit in Brussels last month.

Macron has called for a permanent European defence headquarters that would plan and monitor defence operations in close cooperation with NATO command centres in the 22 countries that are both EU and NATO members.

Merkel, who herself faces elections in September, said the two core European powers would work to give "new momentum" to the Franco-German axis -- whose hand is strengthened by Britain's shock Brexit decision last year.