PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday urged EU member states to agree on “massive, common funding” to unlock investments of hundreds of billions of euros for European defense and security.

“We will give a mandate to the European Commission to define our capacity needs for a common defense,” Macron said in an interview published in several French newspapers on Sunday. “This massive funding probably reaches hundreds of billions of euros,” he said.

His comments come ahead of a special EU summit set for Thursday that will be focused on defense.