French ambassador will return to US following talks between Biden, Macron

French President Emmanuel Macron will next week send his ambassador back to the United States after President Joe Biden agreed that consulting France before announcing a security pact with Australia could have prevented a diplomatic row, said Macron’s office.

 France recalled its ambassadors from the United States and Australia last week after the United States and Britain signed a nuclear submarine deal with Australia, causing Canberra to scrap a previous multi-billion French-designed submarine deal.

Macron and Biden had a phone call Wednesday in which the two leaders agreed to launch in-depth consultations to rebuild trust, Macron’s Élysée Palace said in a statement.

Macron and Biden will meet in Europe at the end of October.

The US also committed to boosting their support for counter-terrorism missions led by European nations in Africa’s Sahel region, Macron’s office said.

'A constant feature of French foreign policy'

The row plunged ties into what some analysts viewed as the most acute crisis since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, which Paris vocally opposed.

After four years of tumultuous relations with former president Donald Trump, the spat had dashed hopes of a complete reset of Franco-US ties under the Biden administration.

Macron and Biden met for the first time in person in June at a summit of G7 countries in Cornwall, southwest England, where they were seen smiling broadly together.

Gilles Gressani, president of the Groupe d'Etudes Geopolitiques thinktank, said this week that showdowns with the US are "a constant feature of French foreign policy".

But he added that "the intensity of [France's] reaction is striking". 

A 'wake-up call'

France's European allies, meanwhile, have rallied around Paris, but some warned the dispute should not torpedo trade talks.

German Europe Minister Michael Roth on Tuesday said France's diplomatic crisis with the US was a "wake-up call for all of us" on the importance of uniting an EU that is often divided on foreign and security policy.

The show of solidarity from Germany and the EU's top officials was welcomed by France, which said the breakdown of trust with Washington strengthened the case for Europe to set its own strategic course.

France's minister for European affairs Clément Beaune called the row "a European issue", and not simply a French one, as he arrived at ministerial talks in Brussels.

 

"I don't think France is overreacting and I don't think France should overreact. But when a situation ... is serious, I think it's also our responsibility to state it very clearly," he said.

EU Council chief Charles Michel said he had a "frank, direct and lively exchange on AUKUS" with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.  

The EU internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, warned there was a growing feeling "that something is broken" in Europe's ties with Washington. 

"So it is probably time to pause and reset our EU-US relationship," he said in a speech in Washington.