TEL AVIV — President Macron’s inner protectionist is putting the skies of Europe in peril, with the French leader resisting a German plan to protect the continent with defense systems made in America and Israel. 

Mr. Macron is calling on fellow European leaders to eschew air defenses from non-European countries. Instead, he urges using systems made on the continent, and preferably in France. Call it Frites de la Liberté.

“Why do we still need to buy American too often?” the beleaguered president told a meeting of 20 European defense ministers on the sidelines of the Paris air show. “Because Americans have standardized much more than we have, and they themselves have federal agencies that provide massive subsidies to their manufacturers.”

With the Ukraine war raging at the heart of the continent, missile defense systems are crucial to Europe’s security — stopping air assaults from small suicide drones or hypersonic missiles that travel through space. Germany has developed a plan to integrate Europe’s air defense systems, which it calls the European Sky Shield project. Unlike 16 other European Union members, as well as Britain, France has declined to join the Berlin initiative. 

The sticking point is that the German-developed project relies on American-made Patriot systems and missile defenses of the Arrow system. Developed as an American-Israeli project and manufactured by Israel Aerospace Industries, it is designed to intercept long-range ballistic missiles as they travel in space. The Arrow 3 is capable of defending against missiles shot from as far as 1500 miles away. 

Even if Mr. Macron’s mercantilism made sense in the air defense field, Europe’s notoriously over-regulated industries may not be able to catch up to already advanced systems made by allies outside of the continent. “When you say Europe, you say slow,” an Israeli researcher in the aerospace and missile defense areas, Tal Inbar, tells the Sun. 

Germany’s Bundestag voted last week to release $600 million as down payment on a $4.3 billion purchase of Arrow 3 batteries, sealing the largest arms exporting deal in Israel’s history. Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, called his Berlin counterpart, Boris Pistorius, on Sunday to discuss “strengthening the security relations between the two countries,” Mr. Gallant’s office said in a statement Sunday. 

Yet, Mr. Macron seems intent on promoting French-made systems that may well be incompatible with the American and Israeli ones and have yet to catch up to those advanced missile defense batteries. “It’s perplexing and difficult to understand why the French feel the need to do this,” an unidentified senior Western official told the Financial Times. “The whole point is to not have competing ideas.”

Addressing the Paris meeting Tuesday, Mr. Macron said that SAMP/T Mamba surface-to-air missiles, developed by France and Italy, are already deployed in Ukraine. There, he said, they have saved numerous lives and properties. “It really is Europe protecting Europe,” Mr. Macron said in a clear reference to Germany’s intent to dominate the continent’s aerial defenses with systems made outside it. 

As President Putin and other Russian officials often issue threats against Europe, it may well need to erect missile defense systems quickly. Those, after all, have proved crucial in Ukraine. Waiting for Europe’s missile defense industry to catch up to America and Israel may make sense for a president at odds with oft-striking French workers, but it could prove hazardous for a continent that increasingly feels threatened.