France has wanted to distance itself from the tension over Taiwan between China and the United States in the name of “European sovereignty” and the interests of the European Union (EU), which are not to fall into a policy of blocks. “Not because we are the allies of the United States, we have to be against China“French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire stressed on Tuesday in an interview on Europe 1 radio station, in which he defended the position of President Emmanuel Macron on his return from an official visit to China last week.
Le Maire insisted that France defends “the path of dialogue” and added: “Is it not preferable to confrontation?” “Does Europe need one more conflict? Does the world need one more conflict? No”.
For the French minister “Europe must have its own strategic conception” which does not necessarily coincide with that of the United States, in the same way that the United States did not take European interests into account when designing its Inflation Reduction Act, the law that it adopted last summer to massively subsidize industrialists who produce in the United States Joined.
In his opinion, “the real issue for Europe is Ukraine” and the fact that there Russia is violating basic principles of the UN Charter and international law. One way of implying that what needs to be achieved is for China to distance itself from Moscow and not to help it, and that to achieve this it is not necessary to upset Beijing.
It was Macron who, in an interview with the French economic daily Les Echos after finishing his official visit to China last Friday, called for the EU to wake up and become a “the third pole” of world influence against the United States and China so as not to be marginalized from history.
On the Taiwan crisis, the French president affirms that the interest of the Europeans is not that this crisis accelerates. “The worst thing – he argues – would be to believe that we Europeans would have to continue in this matter and adapt to the rhythm of the United States and to an overreaction of China”.
According to his analysis, if the situation degenerates between Washington and Beijing, we Europeans “will have neither the time nor the means to finance our strategic autonomy and we will become vassals when we can be the third center if we have a few years to build it”
The US reaction to Macron
In response to Macron’s comments, the United States claimed France as one of its main allies in dealing with China, despite the fact that the French president distanced himself from Washington’s policy towards Taiwan. “France is our oldest ally. The values we share have guided our relationship and continue to do so today,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told a news conference.
Patel thus reacted to Macron’s interview in the newspaper Les Echos after his trip to Beijing, in which he advocated building a European “autonomy” with respect to the foreign policy of the United States and China on issues such as Taiwan. Patel responded that all countries are sovereign and have the “right” to have their own bilateral relations and comment on them.
But he also stressed that Washington and Paris share the same stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s “threats” on Taiwan and Beijing’s “human rights violations.” “We have done a very important job supporting Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression and we have also collaborated to deal with the challenges posed by China,” he said.
The spokesman for US diplomacy also recalled that the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who was in Beijing with Macron, “I have described China as a systematic rival and a strategic competitor.”
During your trip, Macron and von der Leyen asked Chinese President Xi Jinping for more involvement in promoting peace in Ukraine. The visit coincided with the deployment of Chinese military drills around Taiwan, in response to the island’s head of state, Tsai Ing-wen, last week’s visit to the United States. In the interview in Les Echos, Macron opined that European countries should not “adapt” to the US strategy on China, nor should they support Beijing’s “overreaction”.
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