Australian and French leaders meet to mend broken ties

French President Emmanuel Macron is due to hold talks with new Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Paris on Friday to repair ties severely damaged by the cancellation of a submarine deal.

Macron and Albanese will have lunch at the Elysee Palace from 1100 GMT, the French presidency said, with talks focused on “restoring confidence” and issues such as stability in the Pacific and climate change.

It will be the first formal meeting between Australian and French leaders since former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison canceled a deal with France to build a dozen diesel-powered submarines last September.

It will also be the first face-to-face meeting between Albanese and Macron following phone calls on May 26.

Albanese, who defeated Conservative Morrison in May’s general election, has made restoring Australia’s international image a priority, particularly in the fight against climate change.

Macron told reporters at Thursday’s NATO summit in Madrid that he was looking forward to the meeting, saying Albanese’s agenda on climate change and relations with China “shares a lot more with France’s agenda… than it does.” was his predecessor.”

“I’m approaching these talks with a lot of optimism and determination because Australia is a great partner and the situation inherited from bad behavior in the past was not a good one,” he said.

The cancellation of the treaty led to an unprecedented crisis between Canberra and Paris, with such bad blood that outgoing Foreign Secretary Jean-Yves Le Drian applauded Morrison’s electoral defeat by Albanese and said it “suited me well”.

Morrison’s actions were characterized by “brutality and cynicism, and I would even be tempted to say blatant incompetence,” Le Drian said at the handover to his successor Catherine Colonna on May 21.

Canberra’s move came as it forged a new security pact with Britain and the United States, which will now supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarines.

Macron recalled France’s envoys in Australia and the United States over the excitement.

France was particularly upset because it sees itself as a key power in the Pacific, thanks to overseas territories like New Caledonia and French Polynesia.

It was also stung when Macron hosted Morrison at the Elysee in June 2021, just months before the stunning U-turn, with French officials saying they hadn’t even privately gotten an inkling of what was to come.

Albanese announced in early June that French submarine maker Naval Group had reached a €555 million ($584 million) “fair and equitable settlement” for Australia’s termination of the decades-old submarine contract, worth several billion dollars agreed.

“It’s important that this reset happens,” Albanese said in a June 24 interview with national broadcaster ABC. “France is of course central to power in Europe, but it is also a key power in the Pacific.”

Morrison’s predecessor as Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said the visit was a “great opportunity” to help Paris and Canberra get through a “very bad time” when the French government didn’t even “answer the phone”.

Albanese “is not Scott Morrison, so that’s a big advantage,” he told French journalists at an event organized by the Institut Montaigne in Paris.