French President Emmanuel Macron in an interview published on Sunday said that Europe must not be a “follower” of either the US or China on Taiwan, saying the bloc risks entanglement in “crises that aren’t ours.”
His comments risk riling Washington and highlight divisions in the EU over how to approach China, as the US steps up confrontation with its closest rival and Beijing draws closer to Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine.
“The worst thing would be to think that we Europeans must be followers and adapt ourselves to the American rhythm and a Chinese overreaction,” Macron told media, including French business daily Les Echos and Politico, as he returned on Friday from a three-day state visit to Beijing.
Photo: AFP
“We must be clear where our views overlap with the US, but whether it’s about Ukraine, relations to China or sanctions, we have a European strategy,” Macron said, citing his prized ideal of EU “strategic autonomy.”
“We don’t want to get into a bloc versus bloc logic,” he added, saying Europe “should not be caught up in a disordering of the world and crises that aren’t ours.”
In response to President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) meeting last week with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Beijing on Saturday launched three-day military exercises around Taiwan after Macron departed for France, including simulated strikes on Taiwanese territory.
Macron discussed Taiwan with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Friday, during a visit in which he was feted while more hawkish European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was kept mostly at arm’s length.
Macron’s Elysee Palace office said the talks had been “dense and frank,” and that the French president was concerned about “growing tensions in the region” that could lead to “a terrible accident.”
Macron was “simply talking about the risk of Chinese ‘overreaction,’ forgetting China wishes to change the status quo by taking over Taiwan one way or the other,” Antoine Bondaz of the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research wrote on Twitter.
“The ambiguity... instils doubt in our like-minded partners,” he added.
Taiwan is just one area that risks “an acceleration of tensions breaking out between the duopoly” of China and the US, Macron said.
If the confrontation escalates too quickly, Europeans “won’t have the time or the resources to finance our strategic autonomy and will become vassals, whereas we can build a third pole if we have a few years,” he added.
Separately, Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said that French lawmakers are planning a visit to Taipei.
The delegation is heading to the nation on Sunday, said a French official who is to be part of the group.
Media officers at the French National Assembly and Senate did not immediately reply when asked to comment on the plan yesterday, a public holiday in France.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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