To judge by the headlines in the French press, Emmanuel Macron has had a resoundingly successful start to the post-summer political year by putting himself at the centre of the international stage. In the eyes of many commentators, from the hosting of the Russian president Vladimir Putin at his holiday retreat at Brégançon in the south of France on August 19th, to meeting British prime minister Boris Johnson at the Élysée a few days later, and then playing host to fellow world leaders at the G7 summit in Biarritz in south-west France for three days, the French head of state did not put a foot wrong.
Macron had reaffirmed France's ability to “take the initiative”, some wrote. The president had earned his “statesman's certificate” others opined. The president himself, meanwhile, made no attempt to hide his satisfaction. “We really succeeded with this summit, France shone,” he said on the evening news bulletin of public broadcaster France 2 on Monday August 26th, the gathering's last day. Beyond the summit's image, economy and finance minister Bruno Le Maire told news channel LCI that the G7 had also been “useful and effective” in concrete terms and that it had enabled “positions to shift on major issues”.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
In terms of public relations and communications, the world leaders' gathering at the French Atlantic resort was indeed a success. The “surprise” arrival of the Iranian foreign minister in Biarritz delighted, for example, the commentators on news channel BFM-TV. As journalist Samuel Gontier noted in his blog on the publication Télérama, these commentators greeted the move as a “dramatic gesture”, a “major coup” and as a sign of “creative diplomacy”. The French head of state, who has been mocked several times by Donald Trump, also took care to be seen side by side with the president of the United States.
The row with Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro over the environmental emergency in the Amazon and some distinctly undiplomatic exchanges on Twitter also allowed Emmanuel Macron to display his green credentials. His opposition “as things stand” to the EU-Mercosur trade deal with South American countries was even applauded by Nicolas Hulot, the popular campaigner who quit the government as environment minister a year earlier. Add to this the interview the French president gave to info-entertainment site Kombini in which he repeated – for it was not the first time he has said this – that he has carried out an environmental transformation, and the picture was complete.
Yet fundamentally, and behind all the choreography and staging, the achievements of the G7 summit are even slighter than they appear. President Macron had in fact himself sought to play down expectations for the event. “Undoubtedly we won't succeed in everything and don't blame me if sometimes we don't get there,” the head of state said, addressing the French people before the summit began. He also stated that there would be no final official communique at the end of the summit on the grounds that “no one reads” that kind of document.
When one promises nothing, the slightest progress is a success. And it is on this basis that the executive is approaching the third political rentrée – the return to business as usual after the long summer break – of this presidency, before it deals with the tricky domestic issue of pension reform. What in the end can one really take away from the few sentences published by the G7 leaders who wanted to “underline their great unity and the positive spirit of the debates”? The first thing to note is one notable absence: that of the fight against global inequality, even though this was supposed to be one of the main themes of the gathering.
On the issue of Iran, the G7 leaders noted that they shared two objectives - “to ensure that Iran never acquires nuclear weapons and to foster peace and stability in the region” - aims which they had already long shared. But the central problem, namely that the Europeans are unable to get around American sanctions against Iran, was not resolved. Donald Trump said that he was ready to meet Iranian president Hassan Rohani. But the Iranian leader himself later stated that Washington would first have to lift its sanctions before any such meeting could occur. In other words, it was back to square one.
On this as on all other subjects, “[only] the future will tell if the G7 was a total success”, Emmanuel Macron admitted to a meeting of French ambassadors at the Élysée on August 27th. On the issues of Ukraine, Libya and Hong Kong, three of the five subjects that made it into the 'leaders' declaration' after the summit, nothing new was announced. The same was true on the issue of trade, the first subject addressed in the declaration. Here the leaders simply trotted out the obvious such as wanting to see “open and fair world trade”, as opposed, presumably to wishing to see closed and unfair trade. Their words came as China itself was preparing for the worse.
There was nothing new, either, in the G7's commitment to “reaching in 2020 an agreement to simplify regulatory barriers and modernize international taxation within the framework of the OECD”. This decision was taken at the G20 held at Osaka in Japan on June 8th and 9th, at which all those countries represented at Biarritz were also present. As for the issue of the digital tax, which is in fact a bilateral issue between France and the US but which was frequently highlighted by the French government to show the usefulness of the summit, there are doubts about how much of a success the apparent deal will prove to be.
And with the Amazon still burning, the G7 countries proposed emergency aid of 20 million dollars to send firefighting aircraft to the region and try to halt the flames which are destroying the forest. The Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro immediately rejected the help, demanding that Emmanuel Macron first had to withdraw his “insults” against the South American leader.
Earlier, Trump had Tweeted his support for Bolsonaro. “I have gotten to know President @jairbolsonaro well in our dealings with Brazil. He is working very hard on the Amazon fires and in all respects doing a great job for the people of Brazil - Not easy. He and his country have the full and complete support of the USA!” wrote the US president, undermining the image of unity on the issue that the French president had sought to forge. Foreign media were not overly impressed by the G7's outcome on this issue and France's role in it either. “The great hopes raised by its much-publicised decision to put this issue on the agenda are far from having been satisfied,” wrote the German daily newspaper Die Welt.
The foreign media's view of the G7 outcome on other issues was scarcely more upbeat. The British weekly The Economist had some words of encouragement: “If nothing else, this summit suggests that Mr Macron is growing into a role as a European leader who may not always get it right, but is trying to use the multilateral system to ease tensions and defend the liberal order.” But it also noted: “The French president may be over-reaching. His efforts with Mr Trump have failed before. And he has little track record as an intermediary.” Meanwhile the American daily The Washington Post declared: “…. at the summit’s conclusion, little of substance had been accomplished.”
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter.