Diplomats had believed it possible: French President Emmanuel Macron would, they said, have a private meeting with United States President Donald Trump during the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit, held in The Hague, Netherlands on Tuesday, June 24 and Wednesday, June 25. There, he was expected to make Europe's voice heard on Iran, Gaza and Ukraine. According to the Elysée, the two leaders had maintained a "special relationship" for years, one marked by firm handshakes and knee slaps, as they displayed in their meeting in Washington last February.

Yet nothing happened: No words were exchanged, no one-on-one meeting took place at The Hague. "I did not have the opportunity to speak with him there," Macron told journalists as he left the summit. The connection, based on personal relations between the French and American presidents, had grown weak. In Paris, Macron's advisers tried to downplay the disparaging remarks Trump made after leaving the G7 summit in Kananaskis, Canada, on June 16, when the American president described his French counterpart as a man who "always gets it wrong" and is constantly "seeking publicity." "It does not bother me," Macron replied. Yet a source at the Elysée could not recall when the two last spoke by phone. The "hug diplomacy" had reached its limits, quipped former French foreign affairs minister Dominique de Villepin.

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