Thirteen years after severing diplomatic relations with Bashar al-Assad's regime in response to its bloody suppression of the popular uprising launched in 2011, France and Germany have expressed their desire to open a new chapter with Syria and its new leaders. On the heights of Mount Mazzeh, overlooking Damascus, in the presidential palace where the Syrian dictator received his guests until his fall on December 8, 2024, the French and German foreign ministers, Jean-Noël Barrot and Annalena Baerbock, were received on Friday, January 3 by Syria's de facto leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa.

Exchanges with the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS, the former branch of al-Qaida in Syria, classified as a terrorist group by the European Union and the US) were "very constructive," emphasized Barrot. The two ministers, who came as part of a European Union (EU)-mandated mission, are the first Western officials to meet the new master of Damascus, whose first steps are being closely scrutinized. Paris and Berlin, who have always rejected normalization with the Assad regime, unlike other EU member states, wanted to send a clear signal "that a new political beginning" between Europe and Syria is possible, said Baerbock.

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