Macron and Xi in the Pyrenees

by Elizabeth Pineau and Bart Biesemans

COL DU TOURMALET, Hautes-Pyrénées (Reuters) – Emmanuel Macron received Xi Jinping on Tuesday at the Col du Tourmalet, the French president’s childhood home in the Hautes-Pyrénées, for an “informal” lunch on the last day of the president’s visit. State in France of the Chinese president, so far stingy with concessions on trade or foreign policy.

Elysée advisors presented this meeting at altitude as an opportunity to move away from protocol and facilitate face-to-face discussions, the day after a more formal first day in Paris.

Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte welcomed Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan at Tarbes-Lourdes airport in windy weather before driving separately to the Col du Tourmalet, where there was thick fog.

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After attending a traditional dance show in the snow, the two leaders, their wives and translators, shared a typically Pyrenean meal – ham, lamb, cheese, blueberry tart – at Etape du Berger, a restaurant in the village. of Mongie where the grandmother of the French head of state rests.

Emmanuel Macron offered several gifts to his guest, a wool blanket from the Pyrenees, a Tour de France jersey and Armagnac. This South-West alcohol is the subject, like cognac and all spirits of the European Union, of an investigation by the Chinese authorities for alleged infringement of competition, which many consider as a response to the investigation of the EU on subsidies for electric vehicles produced in China.

According to a French diplomatic source, China has however decided not to introduce protective customs duties on these products immediately, and Emmanuel Macron thanked Xi Jinping for “his openness” on this subject.

REBALANCING

One of the main objectives of the French president on the occasion of this state visit by Xi Jinping was to plead for a rebalancing of commercial relations between Europe and China, for better access for European companies to the Chinese market or a reduction in public subsidies paid by Beijing to exporting companies.

Xi Jinping said he was open to new high-level discussions on trade frictions while rejecting the idea of ​​an “overcapacity problem” of China flooding European markets to sell its production.

Several commercial agreements were signed on Monday in the fields of energy, finance or transport but no major contract was announced.

In the agricultural sector, China and France have signed agreements to open the Chinese market to new French products: pork offal and processed pork proteins, announced Chinese customs and the French Ministry of Agriculture. .

The hope, on the European side, of a Chinese order for Airbus on the occasion of Xi Jinping’s visit seems to have been disappointed, with the two parties only agreeing to extend their cooperation.

On the diplomatic level, the Chinese president on Monday gave his support to the idea of ​​a global Olympic truce during the Paris Games.

On Ukraine, an issue on which the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, invited to the Elysée on Monday, said she hoped to see Beijing “use all its influence to put an end to the Russian war of aggression”, Xi Jinping called for the holding, “in due time”, of an international conference “recognized by Russia and Ukraine”, distancing himself from the peace meeting organized next month in Switzerland and boycotted by Moscow.

Xi Jinping, who is making his first visit to Europe in five years, will leave France for Serbia on Tuesday before completing his European tour in Hungary.

(Elizabeth Pineau, Tassilo Hummel, Tim Hepher, John Irish, Leigh Thomas, Dominique Patton in Paris, Piotr Lipinski in Gdansk, written by Ingrid Melander, Jean-Stéphane Brosse for the French version, edited by Kate Entringer)