President Joe Biden told French President Emmanuel Macron that the U.S. had been “clumsy” in its handling of a U.S.-British submarine deal with Australia that replaced a prior deal France had made with Australia.
Biden and Macron greeted each other with handshakes and shoulder grabs before their first face-to-face meeting since the deal was publicly announced in September, marking the latest American effort to try to smooth hurt French sensibilities. Biden didn’t formally apologize to Macron, but conceded the U.S. should not have caught its oldest ally by surprise.
The French leader said he believed Biden was sincere when he said he thought France had been informed about the submarine deal by Britain and Australia. Biden and Macron also discussed new ways to cooperate in the Indo-Pacific, also an effort to soothe French tempers over being left out of the U.S.-U.K.-Australia partnership that accompanied the submarine deal. Other topics on the agenda included China, Afghanistan and Iran, as well as climate change, before next week’s U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland.
U.S. officials, from Biden on down, have worked for weeks to try to soothe tensions, though not to the extent of having Biden visit France himself to try to reset relations. Instead, he’s dispatching Vice President Kamala Harris forIn a concession by the White House, the Biden-Macron meeting in Rome was organized and hosted by France at Villa Bonaparte, the French Embassy to the Holy See, which Macron’s office called “politically important.
Following their meeting, Biden and Macron were issuing a joint statement outlining areas of mutual cooperation, including the Indo-Pacific and economic and technological cooperation.
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