The government yesterday sent a congratulatory message to French President Emmanuel Macron on his re-election to a second term, and expressed a desire for deeper bilateral relations.
The message was conveyed to Macron, his government and people via the Taiwan representative office in Paris, after the official results of the French presidential runoff election on Sunday were announced, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
Taiwan is ready to deepen its cooperation with the French government to safeguard stability in the Indo-Pacific region and across the Taiwan Strait, and contribute to rules-based international democratic order, the ministry said.
Photo: Reuters
Macron on Sunday became the first French president in 20 years to win a second term, gaining 58.55 percent of the vote, while challenger Marine Le Pen received 41.45 percent.
Taipei and Paris have enjoyed cordial relations under the shared universal values of democracy and human rights, the ministry said.
Taiwan opened a second French representative office in Aix-en-Provence.
The French government in its Indo-Pacific strategy report this year said that the EU would “continue to develop its already close trade and investment relations with its key partners in global value chains, such as Taiwan.”
The upper and lower houses of the French Parliament last year passed several Taiwan-friendly resolutions and sent delegations to visit Taiwan, the ministry said.
Taiwan Representative to France Francois Wu (吳志中) has been invited several times to attend parliamentary hearings in Paris, it said.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said it had deployed patrol vessels to expel a China Coast Guard ship and a Chinese fishing boat near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. The China Coast Guard vessel was 28 nautical miles (52km) northeast of Pratas at 6:15am on Thursday, approaching the island’s restricted waters, which extend 24 nautical miles from its shoreline, the CGA’s Dongsha-Nansha Branch said in a statement. The Tainan, a 2,000-tonne cutter, was deployed by the CGA to shadow the Chinese ship, which left the area at 2:39pm on Friday, the statement said. At 6:31pm on Friday,
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The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) put Taiwan in danger, Ma Ying-jeou Foundation director Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑) said yesterday, hours after the de facto US embassy said that Beijing had misinterpreted World War II-era documents to isolate Taiwan. The AIT’s comments harmed the Republic of China’s (ROC) national interests and contradicted a part of the “six assurances” stipulating that the US would not change its official position on Taiwan’s sovereignty, Hsiao said. The “six assurances,” which were given by then-US president Ronald Reagan to Taiwan in 1982, say that Washington would not set a date for ending arm sales to Taiwan, consult