The meeting between the presidents of the United States, Joe Biden, and the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, this Friday (29), ended —according to the two leaders— the diplomatic crisis triggered by the American agreement with the United Kingdom and Australia to the construction of nuclear submarines.
Dubbed Aukus, the security pact angered the French because it meant the cancellation of a billion-dollar contract signed in 2016 with the Australians. Now, according to Macron, it’s time to look to the future. “What really matters is what we do together in the coming weeks and months,” the Frenchman said during a speech at his Vatican embassy after meeting Biden.
Earlier, the American met with Pope Francis. So Biden was an hour and a half late for his meeting with Macron, during which they discussed the environment, combating terrorism in Africa and defending Europe. Afterwards, the two leaders posed for the cameras shaking hands.
Macron said the meeting was important in marking the beginning of a “true joint project” with the US. Since the diplomatic stalemate, according to the French leader, there has been “an indispensable clarification on what constitutes European sovereignty and defense and what they can bring to global security.”
Asked later whether confidence in Biden was completely restored, the French president gave an answer that suggests that the relationship between the two leaders may still have some thorns. “Trust is like love: statements are good, but evidence is better.”
The American leader, for his part, admitted that US actions in the episode could have been better.
“I think what happened was awkward. It wasn’t done very elegantly,” the US president said. “I had the impression that certain things happened that didn’t have to happen. But I want to make it clear: France is an extremely valuable partner — extremely — and a power in its own right.”
Biden said he was under the impression that France was already aware that its deal with Australia was not going well at the time of the American announcement. At the time, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian described the Aukus as “a stab in the back” and said Biden acted like former President Donald Trump in a “unilateral, brutal, unpredictable manner”.
On Friday, the Democrat sought to shower Paris with praise, saying the United States has no older, more loyal ally than France and that there is no place in the world the two countries cannot work together.
Using almost the same words, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is due to meet Macron over the weekend, also sought to strengthen ties with his European neighbor — after both countries raised the bar in recent days in a linked feud. to the post-Brexit fishing industry.
“France is one of our best, oldest and closest allies, friends and partners,” he told reporters on his way to Italy. “The bonds that bind us are much stronger than the turmoil that currently exists in the relationship. That’s what I’ll tell Emmanuel, a friend I’ve known for many years.”
This was the first time Biden and Macron had met since the beginning of the diplomatic crisis. Since then, the two presidents have spoken by phone on at least two occasions. In the first of them, they agreed that “the situation [no caso Aukus] it would have benefited from open consultations between allies on issues of strategic interest to France” and other US European partners.
In the same conversation, they agreed on Friday’s meeting, and Macron decided that his ambassador would return to Washington the following week — a diplomatic gesture that put a damper on the relationship between the leaders. In the jargon of international relations, summoning an ambassador, as the French leader did at the time, is a movement that expresses strong dissatisfaction with the country that hosts the diplomats.
The second call took place last week. According to the White House, “the two leaders have reviewed their teams’ efforts to support stability and security in the Sahel and increase cooperation in the Indo-Pacific.” Deputy Kamala Harris’s visit to Paris in November was also scheduled.
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