Category Archives: Emmanuel Macron

Macron accuses Australian PM of lying over submarine deal

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French president criticises Scott Morrison and expresses scepticism that Aukus pact will deliver on schedule

Emmanuel Macron has accused the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, of lying to him over an abandoned $90bn submarine contract, in a significant escalation of tensions between Paris and Canberra.

The French president levelled the accusation in impromptu comments to Australian journalists on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Rome. He said he had a lot of “respect and friendship” for Australia and Australians, but that respect between nations needed to be reciprocated.

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France and UK told: end dispute or you’ll wreck Cop26 summit

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Scientists and experts in despair over fishing row, as prime minister declares summit will be ‘world’s moment of truth’

Leading scientists and environmentalists called on Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron to declare an immediate ceasefire in a bitter Anglo-French row over fishing rights on Saturday as fears grew that the UK’s arguments with its EU neighbours could overshadow the crucial Cop26 summit on climate change.

On the eve of the UK hosting 120 world leaders at the meeting in Glasgow, the prime minister said the summit would be “the world’s moment of truth” and could mark “the beginning of the end of climate change”. Speaking at a meeting of G20 leaders in Rome, he added: “The question everyone is asking is whether we seize this moment or let it slip away.”

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Rise of far right puts Dreyfus affair into spotlight in French election race

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As Emmanuel Macron opens a museum dedicated to the exonerated Jewish soldier, ultra-nationalists led by Éric Zemmour again question his innocence

More than a century after he was exonerated, Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish army officer whose false conviction for treason sparked bitter controversy, has erupted into France’s presidential race amid far-right attempts to question his innocence.

Emmanuel Macron last week personally inaugurated the first museum dedicated to the Dreyfus affair, a historical collection exhibited in the house of Émile Zola, the writer and best-known defender of the persecuted officer, in Médan west of Paris.

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Biden tells France the US was ‘clumsy’ in its handling of Aukus deal – video

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Joe Biden tried to repair his personal and political relationship with Emmanuel Macron by acknowledging that the announcement of a security and technology pact that blindsided France was a 'clumsy' episode handled with a lack of grace. The US president and his French counterpart met at France’s Vatican embassy in Rome on Friday, before the G20 leaders’ summit this weekend, for their first in-person discussion since Macron was left feeling betrayed and humiliated by September’s security deal

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Biden admits to Macron the US was ‘clumsy’ in Aukus submarine deal

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American president moves to repair relationship after France was blindsided by security pact

Joe Biden has moved to repair his damaged personal and political relationship with Emmanuel Macron by acknowledging that the announcement of a security and technology pact that blindsided France was a “clumsy” episode handled with a lack of grace.

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Macron’s fighting talk on fishing is driven by far-right election threats

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Analysis: British government is not entirely innocent but Paris knows forceful rhetoric should only go so far

In January 2017, Emmanuel Macron, in third place in the race to be the next president of France and seen by some as an electoral bubble waiting to burst, staged a photo opportunity in the fish market of Le Guilvinec in Brittany. “Brexit will not go well because Brexit cannot go well,” Macron told fishers who had raised their concerns about the future. “But I’ll make [the fishing problem] a red line in our negotiations with the UK.”

Macron’s seizing of the Élysée Palace later that year was hugely buoyed up by the turnout in the coastal region. Close to a third of voters in Brittany gave him their vote in the crucial first round of the 2017 contest, a greater proportion than in any other region of France.

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Macron’s re-election hopes may be driving Brexit fishing row, says Eustice

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UK environment secretary accuses France of using ‘inflammatory’ rhetoric in escalating dispute

Emmanuel Macron’s hopes of being re-elected president may be driving the diplomatic row with France over post-Brexit access to Britain’s fishing waters, the UK’s environment secretary has claimed.

George Eustice accused Paris of using “inflammatory” rhetoric in an escalating dispute over a shortfall in licences for French fishing vessels seeking to operate in the coastal waters of the UK and Jersey.

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Global activists gather at Rome G20 to demand tougher action on China

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Beijing must not be let off hook over human rights abuses in return for climate cooperation, say legislators

Legislators from around the world have gathered on the fringes of the G20 summit in Rome to protest against the presence of the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, and urge leaders not to let China off the hook over human rights abuses in return for Beijing’s cooperation on the climate crisis.

Many of those at the Rome counter-meeting have been banned from travelling to China as punishment for campaigning against Chinese repression in Xinjiang.

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Macron’s anger over nuclear submarine deal linked to French election, Peter Dutton says

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Australian defence minister’s claim comes as French president and PM Scott Morrison speak for first time since rift over Aukus deal

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Peter Dutton says sustained expressions of outrage from the French president, Emmanuel Macron, may be connected to the European country’s looming national election rather than the cancellation of a $90bn submarine contract.

Australia’s defence minister told the Nine network a call on Thursday night between Macron and the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, had been “productive”. The conversation was the first time the two leaders have spoken since the unveiling of the Aukus pact sent diplomatic relationship between Canberra and Paris into freefall.

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Scrapping submarines deal broke trust, Macron tells Australian PM

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French president says Scott Morrison should propose tangible actions to heal rift, in first call since row

The French president has told the Australian prime minister that the scrapping of a multibillion-dollar submarine contract “broke the relationship of trust” and said Canberra should propose “tangible actions” to heal a diplomatic rift.

In their first phone call since Australia dumped the submarine plans, Emmanuel Macron also encouraged Scott Morrison to adopt a more ambitious climate policy, including a commitment “to cease production and consumption of coal at the national level and abroad”, according to a French government readout of the conversation.

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French election polls: who is leading the race to be the next president of France?

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Emmanuel Macron and the far-right hopeful Marine Le Pen look set to be joined by numerous other candidates in the French presidential election. We look at the latest polling, and introduce some of the most likely candidates

France will vote to elect a new president in April, and the jostling for position among potential candidates is well under way. The current president, Emmanuel Macron, has yet to declare his candidacy but is expected to run again. His second-round opponent from 2017, the far-right populist Marine Le Pen, has already launched her campaign. Alongside them on the ballot will be Anne Hidalgo, the Socialist candidate, Yannick Jadot, representing the Green movement, and a candidate from the centre-right, to be chosen by Les Républicains, on 4 December. The far-right TV pundit Éric Zemmour, who has no political party, could declare an outsider bid.

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US urges UK to rebuild relations with Paris after submarine contract row

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Exclusive: diplomatic effort by US following Australia cancelling $66bn deal with France not matched by London

The US has urged Britain to follow its example and try to repair its relations with Paris in the wake of the row over France’s loss of its submarine contract with Australia.

Australia pulled out of the $66bn (£48bn) contract for 12 diesel electric-powered submarines, signed in 2016, to opt instead for nuclear-powered submarines to be developed with America and the UK. The secretive and sudden cancellation of the contract has created a crisis of trust between Paris on the one hand and London, Canberra and Washington on the other.

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Macron: police violence at 1961 Algerian protest ‘unforgivable’

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French president attends memorial for those killed and lays flowers at bridge over the Seine

Emmanuel Macron has described a bloody police operation against Algerian pro-independence demonstrators 60 years ago that led to many deaths as an “unforgivable” crime.

Attending a memorial for those killed, Macron laid flowers at a bridge over the River Seine which marked a starting point for the protests in October 1961 that led to one of the darkest chapters of French postwar history.

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Macron and the ‘French Trump’ trap Gaullism’s heirs in a political vice

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With just months to go before presidential polls, the centre-right Les Républicains, under pressure from both flanks, are scrambling for a suitable candidate

Six months before a presidential election and France’s mainstream right finds itself squeezed – between the hammer and the anvil as they say here – without a candidate and facing an existential threat from either side.

On one flank are the far-right Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour, a polarising television pundit who wants to talk about immigration, identity and Islam – the three i’s – and ban “non-French” names such as Mohamed.

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Algeria bans French military planes as diplomatic row deepens

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Tensions rise as Algiers imposes airspace ban in latest response to visa dispute and Macron criticism

The diplomatic discord between Algeria and France has deepened after Algiers banned French military planes from its airspace, its latest response to a row over visas and critical comments from President Emmanuel Macron.

France’s jets regularly fly over the former French colony to reach the Sahel region of western Africa, where its soldiers are helping to battle jihadist insurgents as part of its Operation Barkhane.

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Macron in visa cuts row as Algeria summons French envoy

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President accused of chasing rightwing votes by making sudden, tough gestures on immigration

The Algerian foreign ministry has summoned the French ambassador for talks in “formal protest” against France’s decision to sharply reduce the number of visas granted to Algerian nationals, as opposition parties in Paris accused Emmanuel Macron of using the row to court rightwing voters.

The French government announced this week that it would substantially cut the number of visas granted to people from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, three north African countries which were all part of France’s former colonial empire and where many people have strong family ties in France.

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France cool on efforts by Australia to repair Aukus rift damage

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Élysée says future talks must have substance after Canberra’s decision to cancel submarine contract

France has said any future talks between Emmanuel Macron and the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, over the fallout from Canberra’s decision to tear up a €56bn (£48bn) submarine deal will have to be “seriously prepared” and have “substance”.

The Élysée Palace has denied it is refusing to take Morrison’s calls, saying the president is “always available to talk on the phone”, but has admitted it is not in any hurry to resume contact with Canberra.

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Hard-left presidential candidate and far-right pundit meet in French TV ‘cockfight’

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Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Éric Zemmour slug it out in much-publicised two-hour debate

Two men; two completely different visions for France.

In a debate that lasted more than two hours, the hard-left presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the hard-right Éric Zemmour, expected to be a presidential candidate, went head to head on prime-time television on Thursday evening.

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Macron yet to take call from Australia’s Scott Morrison over sub snub

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Australian PM hopes to speak with French president ‘when the time is right and the opportunity presents’

French president Emmanuel Macron has not yet taken a call from Scott Morrison amid continuing fury in Paris over the torn up submarine deal.

Morrison, the Australian prime minister, said he hoped to speak with Macron “when the time is right and when the opportunity presents” but he understood “the hurt and the disappointment” felt by France over the cancellation of the $90bn arrangement.

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Biden recognises there could have been ‘more discussion’ with France says Psaki – video

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During the White House daily press briefing on Wednesday, press secretary Jen Psaki was asked for additional details about Joe Biden’s call with the French president Emmanuel Macron today, after which it was announced the French ambassador would return to Washington.

Psaki noted that the phone call between the two leaders lasted about 30 minutes, and she said it was a “friendly” conversation. “[Biden] acknowledged that there could have been more discussion,” she said.

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