“It’s good, it’s over, let’s go forward,” said the leader of the European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, after a meeting with his American counterpart.
Le Monde
The “incident” is closed: the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, posted, Friday, October 15 in Washington, his willingness to turn the page of the Franco-American crisis on the file Aukus, who had cooled relations between the United States and Brussels, greeting reinforced transatlantic cooperation.
“We are not going to be masochists and emphasize and still on our problems, we have to overcome them and look to the future,” he said to journalists in the aftermath of his meeting with his American counterpart , Antony Blinken. “There was an incident, there were some misunderstandings, there was a lack of communication, all of this has already been said,” he said. “It’s good, it’s over, let’s go from the front. Let’s start working together more closely,” he added.
“Building a more balanced partnership”
In September, Josep Borrell had expressed “solidarity” of the European Union with regard to France in the unprecedented crisis which opposed it to the United States. At issue, the announcement by the US President Joe Biden of a new alliance in the Indo-Pacific region with Australia and the United Kingdom, which has come to cancel an important submarine contract between Paris and Canberra. The French authorities have denounced a “blow in the back” and a “breach of trust”.
President Biden and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, finally agreed to try to restore confidence. “It is clear that the will to cooperate and build a more balanced partnership is, for both camps, the cornerstone of this new partnership,” said Friday Josep Borrell.
He praised the next launch of a dialogue between the United States and the European Union on security and defense, but also the decision, announced Thursday with Antony Blinken, to hold at the end of the year “High-level consultations on the Indo-Pacific”. This forum will strengthen ongoing discussions between the European Union and Washington on posture to adopt against China, whose prosecution is scheduled for December.