France maintains a “constant” position on issues related to Taiwan and stresses the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, the Taipei French Office said yesterday.
The office issued the statement after French President Emmanuel Macron sparked criticism for saying in a Politico interview published on Sunday that Europe should avoid getting “caught up in crises that are not ours.”
“The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic [the Taiwan issue] and take our cue from the US agenda and a Chinese overreaction,” Macron added.
Photo: AFP
“France’s position on Taiwan is constant,” the French office wrote on Facebook yesterday.
“It expressed this position in particular in the Declaration of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the G7 Summit and the High Representative of the EU of Aug. 3, 2022, as well as in the Joint Declaration of the President of the French Republic and US President on Dec. 1, 2022,” the office wrote.
“More recently, it stated the position through the Joint Declaration of the second France-Australia ministerial consultations of Jan. 30 as well as the joint declaration of the 36th Franco-British Summit of March 10,” it added.
“France and its partners stress the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and call for the peaceful settlement of issues concerning both sides of the Strait,” the office said.
“These principles are also recalled in the EU strategy for cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region, adopted in Sept. 2021,” it added.
European Commission chief spokesperson Eric Mamer on Tuesday told a news briefing that the EU remains “firmly opposed to the use of force to make any attempt to unilaterally break the status quo in Taiwan.”
The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, an international cross-party group of legislators from 29 countries working toward reform on how democratic countries approach China, said in a statement that they were “dismayed” to learn of Macron’s remarks.
“With Beijing ramping up military exercises in the South China Sea and showing continuing support for Russian aggression in Ukraine, this is the worst possible moment to send a signal of indifference over Taiwan,” the group said.
“President Macron’s ill-judged remarks not only disregard the vital place of Taiwan in the global economy, but undermine the decades-long commitment of the international community to maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait,” it said.
“History is a harsh judge of past efforts to appease authoritarians. Unfortunately, the president shows little sign of having learned the lessons of the past,” the group said.
Macron does not speak for Europe and his words are “severely out of step with the feeling across Europe’s legislatures and beyond,” it added.
Norbert Rottgen, a foreign policy spokesman for the German Christian Democratic Union, said on Twitter on Monday that Macron “has managed to turn his China trip into a public relations coup for Xi and a foreign policy disaster for Europe.”
“If Macron really believes that China’s global power ambitions have nothing to do with us Europeans, that’s not only naive, but above all dangerous! An attack on Taiwan becomes more likely the more Xi believes will remain neutral in such a conflict. But we are not neutral!” Rottgen wrote.
“With his statements Macron is once again dividing Europe and making a common China policy more difficult,” he added.
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