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.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS