Emmanuel Macron and his team spent Wednesday cleaning up his comments to news outlets last week that strongly suggested that France was sympathetic to Beijing’s claims over Taiwan and that Washington is to blame for Chinese saber-rattling. The French president occasioned a press conference to explain himself and fire back at Donald Trump’s digs at Macron’s handling of his recent trip to China.
Macron’s team let the world know one thing: The French leader isn’t sorry. “This is something the president stands by entirely,” a French diplomat told Reuters today. This person also made the case that Macron was misunderstood and that Politico’s writeup on the interview featured a “sensationalist” headline and didn’t do justice to the position that he articulated.
Macron’s comments trashing the U.S. approach to Taiwan and reiterating his previous calls for Europe to embrace a “strategic autonomy” free of Washington’s diktats set off a political firestorm in Washington and across Europe. Members of Congress lined up to condemn the comments, made in an interview with Politico and France’s Les Echos, during his recent trip to China. For its part, the White House has attempted to sidestep the controversy. Donald Trump entered the fray last night during an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show. “You’ve got this crazy world that’s blowing up and the United States have absolutely no say. And Macron, who’s a friend of mine, is over with China kissing his ass in China, okay, in China.”
Macron’s initial remarks were noteworthy for what he’s reported to have said and what was excised from the articles on the conversation. After speaking with Xi in China, he emphasized that Europe shouldn’t take on “crises that are not ours,” like Taiwan. He also seemed to blame the U.S. for stoking tensions across the Taiwan Strait. And curiously, Politico noted in an editorial blurb at the end of the article that comments where Macron “spoke even more frankly about Taiwan and Europe’s strategic autonomy were cut” by his team as a condition for agreeing to the interview.
However, Macron took a different tone during a press conference in Amsterdam today, telling reporters: “The position for France and Europeans is the same on Taiwan. We are for the status quo and this policy is the same. It hasn’t changed: It’s the policy of one China and a peaceful resolution to the question.” He also said that France and the U.S. have the same goal of preserving peace and freedom of navigation. He emphasized that France recently sent a military vessel through the Taiwan Strait despite ongoing Chinese military exercises.
Macron reiterated some of the themes that he covered in the Politico interview. “To be allied does not mean to be a vassal,” he said this afternoon. It “doesn’t mean that we no longer have the right to think alone.”
Asked to respond to Trump’s comments, Macron accused the former president of escalating the situation, saying that he didn’t comment on Trump’s utterances when he was president and that he wouldn’t do that now that Trump is no longer president.