Politico | Emmanuel Macron ends China visit with slew of trade deals and green pact
- Paris and Beijing signed 40 bilateral contracts in the fields of aviation, agro-food, energy, tourism, health, finance and digital
French foie gras, Franco-Italian small aircraft, French utility company Engie and European luxury foods were among those he advocated for, in addition to the world’s climate and biodiversity, in a series of contracts and agreements signed on Wednesday in Beijing.
The French president also took the opportunity to undercut the American position on the issue.
The US will be the only country in the world that will not be a party to the Paris pact, which calls on nations to set individual targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The incoming EU commissioner for trade, Phil Hogan, was also present in Beijing on Wednesday to sign the EU-China agreement on Geographic Indications – intellectual property protections for gourmet foods.
But Macron appeared to jump the gun on Hogan, by hailing the deal two days ahead of the Commission’s official announcement Wednesday.
Hogan, as well as the German Minister for Education and Research Anja Karliczek, also accompanied Macron on his visit to Shanghai for the second edition of the China International Import Expo earlier in the week.
“Our capacity to define together, before the summer, the reform of the WTO is absolutely vital,” said Macron.
“I want us to have a European proposal, when we have that we’ll see what China agrees with or not, and what the US agrees with or not. So the first part of 2020 should be dedicated to European effort to propose and then a negotiation with others,” he said.
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Furthermore, Paris and Beijing agreed on a deal that could see French foie gras allowed back into China, after it was banned in 2015 as a result of an outbreak of H5N8 bird flu.
The agreement extends a deal struck between China and France in March this year, which defined the sanitary conditions to enable French chicken meat exports to return to China. Wednesday’s deal will allow that certification process, which can take a year or longer, to begin for foie gras.
France and China also agreed that the Chinese authorities and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) would agree, by March 2020, on a certification process that would allow Franco-Italian company ATR to export its short-haul aircraft to service China’s expanding domestic flights market.
And a memorandum of understanding between Beijing Gas Group and Engie sets up future collaboration on a liquefied natural gas terminal in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi ‘confident’ of investment deal with EU
Overall, Paris and Beijing signed 40 bilateral contracts in the fields of aviation, agro-food, energy and sustainable development, tourism, health, finance and digital. Xi said they amounted to a total of US$15 billion, while the Elysée refused to give an overall estimate of the value.
During their joint press declaration, there was no mention of the increasingly harsh crackdown on Hong Kong protesters or the reported internment of more than a million Uygur Chinese Muslims and other minorities by Chinese authorities.
But in questions afterward, Macron expressed support to “all our compatriots”.
“I told the president, for me the heart of the response is to insist on the need for de-escalation through dialogue,” said the French president.
