French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday during a visit to the Netherlands that being an “ally” of the United States does not necessarily mean being a “vassal”, fully accepting controversial comments made on Taiwan.
“It’s not because we are allies, that we do things together (…) that we no longer have the right to think for ourselves”, he said during a conference release in Amsterdam following a meeting with Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
“And that we are going to follow the people who are the toughest in a country that is allied with us,” he added in an apparent allusion to Republican Party officials, who are very offensive on China.
Emmanuel Macron has sparked a wave of misunderstanding in the United States and Europe by calling on the European Union not to be “follower” of Washington or Beijing on the question of Taiwan.
Remarks immediately interpreted as a distancing from Washington while the United States has been very committed to Ukraine since the start of the Russian offensive.
“Macron, who is a friend, is with China licking his ass,” added former US President Donald Trump.
This former American head of state “is part of this escalation which is sought by some”, lamented the French president, welcoming on the contrary the will of the American Democratic President Joe Biden “to avoid any escalation despite the current tensions. “.
France is not uninterested in tensions around Taiwan, a French diplomatic source had earlier underlined, recalling that a French frigate was sailing in the Taiwan Strait when China conducted its last military exercises to put pressure on the island. .
Earlier in the day, Emmanuel Macron, caught up in the Netherlands by protests against his pension reform, replied that it was necessary to “sometimes accept controversy” to “build paths for the future”.
“We are carrying out in the Netherlands as in France difficult reforms which sometimes raise protests”, “anxieties” aroused by the “changes of time”, he conceded in front of the French community in Amsterdam.
His state visit, the first of a French president to the Netherlands for 23 years, was again disrupted on Wednesday by a few dozen demonstrators.
Two of them, a man and a woman, were arrested as they “ran” towards him when he arrived outside the quantum physics laboratory at the University of Amsterdam, Lex van Liebergen told AFP , police spokesperson.
TV images show the man stopped in his tracks by an aide-de-camp of Emmanuel Macron and brutally tackled to the ground near the president who is facing very strong protest in France because of the pension reform.
“For the honor of the workers, even if Macron does not want to, we are here”, he had time to chant, taking up the song of the anti-Macron protesters in France, before being taken away from strength.
About forty demonstrators were also waiting for him when he left university, waving the same banner as the day before in The Hague claiming “President of violence and hypocrisy”.
One of them, French and studying social sciences in Amsterdam, presented himself to journalists as a libertarian. He explained that he wanted to denounce the police “violence” during the demonstrations in France and “spoil” the visit of the president.
Emmanuel Macron had already been interrupted the day before, on the first day of his visit, during a speech on Europe in The Hague.
He visited with the king the quantum physics laboratory, a promising technology intended to increase the computing power of computers.
The two governments then signed an “innovation pact”, with the key to cooperation in semiconductors, quantum physics and energy, all areas in which the European Union intends to strengthen its independence.
The two governments are also working on finalizing a defense agreement by 2024.
Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte, accompanied by King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima, concluded their trip with a visit to the Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
04/12/2023 19:51:52 – Amsterdam (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
