Emmanuel Macron continued his state visit to the Netherlands on Wednesday April 12. The French president took the opportunity of a press conference alongside Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte to clarify the controversial remarks he made in China. Paris “is for a status quo in Taiwan, supports the one-China policy and [the search] for a peaceful settlement,” he said. A position that he says is “consistent with ally status” but does not mean being a “vassal” of the United States. “France has no lesson to learn from anyone. Neither on the ground in Ukraine, nor in the Sahel,” he said.

Emmanuel Macron had caused 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. “The worst thing would be to think that we Europeans should follow” on the Taiwan question “and adapt to the American rhythm and a Chinese overreaction”, he said in an interview with the American site Politico and in the French business daily Les Echos published on Sunday. Remarks immediately interpreted as a distancing from Washington.

Also questioned about the social protest in connection with the pension reform, the French head of state indicated that he would propose to the social partners an “exchange which will make it possible to initiate the continuation and to take into account the decisions, whatever ‘they are, from the Constitutional Council’ expected on Friday. “The country must keep moving forward,” he continued. “I will engage for everything that concerns them, the social partners to be able to return – I know that the period will still bear the traces of the disagreements of the moment – but I will do it with the spirit of harmony and the will to engage the continuation , regardless of the decision” of the judges, he continued.

Earlier in the day, Emmanuel Macron had again been overtaken by protests against his unpopular reform. You have to “sometimes accept controversy” to “build paths for the future”, he had judged. “We are carrying out difficult reforms in the Netherlands, as in France, which sometimes arouse protests”, “anxieties” aroused by “epochal changes”, he conceded to the French community in Amsterdam. Of a few dozen protesters, a man and a woman were arrested for “disturbing public order and threatening” as they “ran” towards him upon his arrival at the University of Amsterdam, the door said. police word, Lex van Liebergen.

A speech by Emmanuel Macron already interrupted the day before

Images show the man stopped in his tracks by Mr. Macron’s aide-de-camp and brutally tackled to the ground near the president. “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. The incident happened when the president had just gotten out of a limousine with the King of the Netherlands, Willem-Alexander, to visit a quantum physics laboratory. One of the arrested protesters had a banner, Ms Van Liebergen added.

About forty demonstrators were also waiting for him when he left the university, waving two banners and signs. One of them, French and studying social sciences in Amsterdam, presented himself to journalists as a libertarian. He explained that he wanted to denounce police “violence” during demonstrations in France and “spoil” the president’s visit. 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 then replied that if democracy was synonymous with the right to demonstrate, it was also put “in danger” when the law is no longer respected.

Emmanuel Macron visited the university’s quantum physics laboratory with the king, a promising technology intended to increase the computing power of computers. The two governments then signed an “innovation pact”, leading 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.