The German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, will meet on Thursday evening, in Paris, with the French President, Emmanuel Macron, during a dinner where they will discuss the politics of the European Union and China, reports POLITICO.
The unofficial and confidential meeting between the two EU heavyweights, which comes just days before a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Europe, is being described as an event semi-private: Scholz and his wife, Britta Ernst, are on a short vacation in the French capital, where they will meet Macron and his wife, Brigitte, in in a French restaurant. No councilors will attend, according to three people with knowledge of the dinner.
Scholz and Macron have clashed repeatedly in recent years, most recently in February, when the French president opened the door to a possible deployment of ground troops to Ukraine, which the chancellor firmly rejected. On Thursday, in interviews given to the international press, Macron reconfirmed his position.
A key topic of discussion will be the visit of Xi Jinping, who arrives in France on Sunday for three days, before heading to Serbia and Hungary.
The dinner will be a chance for Scholz to brief Macron on his meeting with Xi last month in Beijing.
Scholz and Macron also disagree on the potential imposition of EU taxes on subsidized Chinese electric vehicles.
According to the German Marshall Fund’s Noah Barkin, who first reported on the dinner, Macron will try to persuade the chancellor to join him at the meeting with Xi next week, along with the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
Another likely topic of the dinner will be EU policy, especially defense and its financing. Macron is pushing hard for so-called defense bonds, which would involve the joint European issuance of debt to finance military investments. So far, Scholz has rejected this idea.
Publisher: BC
