Tag Archives: Macron

Sore at Macron’s ‘dictatorship’ criticism, Venezuela blasts France

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a meeting at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, Venezuela August 25, 2017. Miraflores Palace/Handout via REUTERS

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela accused France on Wednesday of joining an “imperialist” campaign after President Emmanuel Macron portrayed the widely criticized socialist government as dictatorial.

Adding to criticism from Washington, the United Nations and major Latin American nations, Macron on Tuesday called President Nicolas Maduro’s administration “a dictatorship trying to survive at the cost of unprecedented humanitarian distress.”

Many countries are outraged at the Venezuelan government’s overriding of the opposition-led congress, crackdown on protests, jailing of hundreds of foes and failure to allow the entry of foreign humanitarian aid to ease a severe economic crisis.

Authorities say local opposition leaders want to topple Maduro in a coup with U.S. support, but its new Constituent Assembly will guarantee peace.

“Comments like this are an attack on Venezuelan institutions and seem to form part of the permanent imperialist obsession with attacking our people,” the government said in a communique responding to Macron.

“The French head-of-state’s affirmations show a deep lack of knowledge of the reality of Venezuela, whose people live in complete peace,” the statement said.

It added that the assembly and upcoming state elections demonstrated the health of local democracy.

Leaders of the fractious opposition coalition boycotted the July 30 election of the assembly, branding it an affront to democracy.

They called for an early presidential election, which Maduro would likely lose as his popularity has sunk along with an economy blighted by triple-digit inflation and food shortages.

France’s foreign ministry on Wednesday reiterated Macron’s comments and said it was studying the best way to accompany all initiatives that would enable credible dialogue that included regional countries.

“It is up to the Venezuelan authorities to give quick pledges in terms of respecting rule of law and fundamental freedoms,” spokeswoman Agnes Romatet-Espagne told reporters in a daily briefing. “The European Union and France will evaluate their relationship with Venezuela on this basis.”

(Reporting by Andrew Cawthorne in Caracas, Sudip Kar-Gupta in Paris; Editing by Girish Gupta/W Simon/Ken Ferris)

France sees Syria opportunity through closer dialogue with Russia

French President Emmanuel Macron walks next to Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian after a meeting about Qatar crisis at the Elysee Place in Paris France, June 21, 2017. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes

By John Irish

PARIS (Reuters) – France said on Thursday it saw a chance to break the stalemate in Syria’s war as Russia now seemed to accept there could be no military solution and preconditions set by some opponents of President Bashar al-Assad had been dropped.

The election of President Emmanuel Macron has provided an opening for Paris to re-examine its Syria policy, with the view that the previous government’s stance that Assad must step down was too intransigent and an obstacle to peacemaking.

Macron last week reversed France’s stance on the future of Assad, saying he saw no legitimate successor at this time and the priority was to prevent Syria becoming a failed state. The United States has also backed away this year from an insistence on Assad’s departure to allow a political solution.

Assad has held on with Russian and Iranian military support in a six-year war with rebels and Islamist militants that has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions.

New Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has been pushing for closer dialogue with Moscow as Paris also seeks to use the lack of clear U.S. policy on Syria to give itself a greater role.

“I can’t give any details, but I think that there is a window of opportunity at the moment. Like everybody, I think the Russians are conscious that there is no military solution to the conflict,” Le Drian, who was defense minister under Macron’s predecessor Francois Hollande, said in an published interview.

“We should be able to get there with a new method that encompasses establishing robust principles that seem unquestionable, without setting rhetorical preconditions but by creating new bridges between the different actors,” he said.

Le Drian did not explain in the interview with Le Monde what those principles were or what incentives Russia would be given.

France, a supporter of the Syrian opposition until now, has demanded the conflict be resolved through a credible political transition based on U.N. Security Council resolutions negotiated between the warring parties with the United Nations in Geneva.

Le Drian, who held six hours of talks primarily on Syria with Russian officials in Moscow last week and has said the priority for France was weakening the threat from Islamic State militants, made no mention of the those resolutions or Geneva.

He called for diplomatic support from permanent members of the Security Council and regional players. A French diplomat said Paris hoped to create a small contact group that could push peace efforts forward.

French officials said part of the reason why Paris has pushed for renewed dialogue with Russia on Syria is the vacuum left by the United States, which they deem has no clear policy beyond defeating Islamic State.

“The Russians have nobody else. They have no coherent interlocutor. The Russians have nothing else to get their teeth into other than the French,” said a European diplomat.

Syria’s civil war has turned to Assad’s favor since 2015, when Russia sent its jets to help his army and allied Shi’ite militias backed by Iran turned back rebels and won new ground.

But the conflict is far from over, with rebels holding swathes of Syria, especially in the northwest and southeast, and Islamic State controlling other areas in the north and east.

(Reporting by John Irish; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Macron meets Russia’s Putin near Paris, promising tough talks

French President Emmanuel Macron (R) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) give a joint press conference at the Chateau de Versailles before the opening of an exhibition marking 300 years of diplomatic ties between the two countries in Versailles, France, May 29, 2017.

By Michel Rose and Denis Dyomkin

VERSAILLES, France (Reuters) – French President Emmanuel Macron met Russia’s Vladimir Putin near Paris on Monday, promising some frank talking with the Kremlin leader after an election campaign in which his team accused Russian media of trying to interfere.

Macron, who took office two weeks ago, has said dialogue with Russia is vital in tackling a number of international disputes. Nevertheless, relations have been beset by mistrust, with Paris and Moscow backing opposing sides in the Syrian civil war and at odds over the Ukraine conflict.

Fresh from talks with his Western counterparts at a NATO meeting in Brussels and a G7 summit in Sicily, Macron was hosting the Russian president at the sumptuous 17th Century palace of Versailles outside Paris.

Amid the baroque splendor, Macron will use an exhibition on Russian Tsar Peter the Great at the former royal palace to try to get Franco-Russian relations off to a new start.

The 39-year-old French leader and Putin exchanged a cordial,  businesslike handshake and smiles when the latter stepped from his limousine for a red carpet welcome, with Macron appearing to say “welcome” to him in French.

The two men then entered the palace to start their talks.

“It’s indispensable to talk to Russia because there are a number of international subjects that will not be resolved without a tough dialogue with them,” Macron told reporters at the end of the G7 summit on Saturday, where the Western leaders agreed to consider new measures against Moscow if the situation in Ukraine did not improve.

“I will be demanding in my exchanges with Russia,” he added.

Relations between Paris and Moscow were increasingly strained under former President Francois Hollande.

Putin, 64, cancelled his last planned visit in October after Hollande accused Russia of war crimes in Syria and refused to roll out the red carpet for him.

Then during the French election campaign the Macron camp alleged Russian hacking and disinformation efforts, at one point refusing accreditation to the Russian state-funded Sputnik and RT news outlets which it said were spreading Russian propaganda and fake news.

Two days before the May 7 election runoff, Macron’s team said thousands of hacked campaign emails had been put online in a leak that one New York-based analyst said could have come from a group tied to Russian military intelligence.

Moscow and RT itself rejected allegations of meddling in the election.

Putin also offered Macron’s far-right opponent Marine Le Pen a publicity coup when he granted her an audience a month before the election’s first round.

French President Emmanuel Macron (R) speaks to Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) in the Galerie des Batailles (Gallery of Battles) as they arrive for a joint press conference at the Chateau de Versailles before the opening of an exhibition marking 300 years of diplomatic ties between the two countries in Versailles, France, May 29, 2017.

French President Emmanuel Macron (R) speaks to Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) in the Galerie des Batailles (Gallery of Battles) as they arrive for a joint press conference at the Chateau de Versailles before the opening of an exhibition marking 300 years of diplomatic ties between the two countries in Versailles, France, May 29, 2017. REUTERS/Stephane De Sakutin/Pool

Nonetheless, Russia’s ambassador to Paris, Alexander Orlov said on Monday that he expected this first meeting between the two men to be full of “smiles” and marking the beginning of “a very good and long relationship”.

Orlov, speaking on Europe 1 radio, said he believed that Macron was “much more flexible” on the Syrian question, though he did not say why he thought this. Putin would certainly invite Macron to pay a visit to Moscow, he said.

Putin’s schedule included a trip to a newly opened Russian Orthodox cathedral in Paris – a call he had been due to make for its inauguration in October, but which was cancelled along with that trip.

“CLEVER MOVE”

Macron decisively beat Le Pen, an open Putin admirer in a fraught presidential election campaign, and afterwards the Russian president said in a congratulatory message that he wanted to put mistrust aside and work with him.

Hollande’s former diplomatic adviser, Jacques Audibert, noted how Putin had been excluded from what used to be the Group of Eight nations as relations with the West soured. Meeting in a palace so soon after the G7 summit was a clever move by Macron.

“Putin likes these big symbolic things. I think it’s an excellent political opportunity, the choice of place is perfect,” he told CNews TV. “It adds a bit of grandeur to welcome Putin to Versailles.”

The Versailles exhibition commemorates a visit to France 300 years ago by Peter the Great, known for his European tastes.

A Russian official told reporters in Moscow on Friday that the meeting was an opportunity “to get a better feel for each other” and that the Kremlin expected “a frank conversation” on Syria.

While Moscow backs President Bashar al-Assad, France supports rebel groups trying to overthrow him. France has also taken a tough line on European Union sanctions on Russia, first imposed when it annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, and cancelled a $1.3 billion warship supply contract in 2015.

During the campaign, Macron backed expanded sanctions if there were no progress with Moscow implementing a peace accord for eastern Ukraine, where Kiev’s forces have been battling pro-Russian separatists.

Since being elected, Macron appears to have toned down the rhetoric, although he noted the two leaders still had “diverging positions” in their first phone call.

(Additional reporting by Cyril Camu; Editing by Richard Balmforth and Alison Williams)

After Macron win, EU lawmakers eye swap plan to close Strasbourg seat

By Francesco Guarascio

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Plans to move the European Union’s London-based medicines regulator to Strasbourg and push through a long-held project to close the EU parliament’s expensive second seat in the French city are gaining traction among legislators, EU officials said.

Lawmakers have been holding discreet talks on such a swap, which they hope would help eliminate French opposition to Strasbourg losing the seat, one official said.

Last week’s election win in France of pro-EU President Emmanuel Macron may further help the plan come to fruition.

MEPs convene in Strasbourg for one week every month and in Brussels for the remainder. The monthly upheaval costs the bloc 114 million euros a year, EU auditors say.

Critics have long called for the arrangement to be scrapped, but it has stayed in place largely because France would have vetoed any attempt to make the required amendment to the EU treaty.

However, since Britain voted to leave the EU, lawmakers from several groupings in the parliament have come to support the idea of a swap, a parliament official said.

A text urging to use the “excellent opportunity” of the Brexit-driven transfer of EU agencies from London to reach an agreement on a single seat of the EU parliament in Brussels was backed in April by 75 percent of EU lawmakers.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA), one of the biggest EU bodies, will have to be moved from London after Britain leaves the EU.

London also hosts the European Banking Authority, which Germany’s Frankfurt is seen as likely to win over competitors Paris, Dublin, Amsterdam and other European cities.

Outgoing French President Francois Hollande chose Lille as the French candidate city to host the EU drugs regulator. Macron would have to reverse such a choice, a potentially risky move as France prepares for legislative elections in June.

Other EU countries would also have to approve EMA’s transfer to France, giving up their own ambitions. Around 40 European cities, from nearly all 27 remaining EU states, have put forward their candidacy to host EMA, with Milan and Vienna seen as the frontrunners.

(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio @fraguarascio; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

France fights to keep Macron email hack from distorting election

Candidates for the 2017 presidential election, Emmanuel Macron (R), head of the political movement En Marche !, or Onwards !, and Marine Le Pen, of the French National Front (FN) party, pose prior to the start of a live prime-time debate in the studios of French television station France 2, and French private station TF1 in La Plaine-Saint-Denis, near Paris. REUTERS/Eric Feferberg/Pool

By Adrian Croft and Geert De Clercq

PARIS (Reuters) – France sought to keep a computer hack of frontrunner Emmanuel Macron’s campaign emails from influencing the outcome of the country’s presidential election with a warning on Saturday it could be a criminal offence to republish the data.

Macron’s team said a “massive” hack had dumped emails, documents and campaign financing information online just before campaigning ended on Friday and France entered a quiet period which forbids politicians from commenting on the leak.

The data leak emerged as polls predicted Macron, a former investment banker and economy minister, was on course for a comfortable victory over far-right leader Marine Le Pen in Sunday’s election, with the last surveys showing his lead widening to around 62 percent to 38.

“On the eve of the most important election for our institutions, the commission calls on everyone present on internet sites and social networks, primarily the media, but also all citizens, to show responsibility and not to pass on this content, so as not to distort the sincerity of the ballot,” the French election commission said in a statement on Saturday.

However, the commission – which supervises the electoral process – may find it difficult to enforce its rules in an era where people get much of their news online, information flows freely across borders and many users are anonymous.

French media covered the hack in various ways, with left-leading Liberation giving it prominence on its website, but television news channels opting not to mention it.

Le Monde newspaper said on its website it would not publish the content of any of the leaked documents before the election, partly because the huge amount of data meant there was not enough time to report on it properly, but also because the dossiers had been published on purpose 48 hours before the election with the clear aim of affecting the vote.

“If these documents contain revelations, Le Monde will of course publish them after having investigated them, respecting our journalistic and ethical rules, and without allowing ourselves to be exploited by the publishing calendar of anonymous actors,” it said.

As the #Macronleaks hashtag buzzed around social media on Friday night, Florian Philippot, deputy leader of Le Pen’s National Front party, tweeted “Will Macronleaks teach us something that investigative journalism has deliberately kept silent?”

DESTABILISATION

As much as 9 gigabytes of data purporting to be documents from the Macron campaign were posted on a profile called EMLEAKS to Pastebin, a site that allows anonymous document sharing.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible, but Macron’s political movement said in a statement the hack was an attempt to destabilize democracy and to damage the party.

En Marche! said the leaked documents dealt with the normal operations of a campaign and included some information on campaign accounts. It said the hackers had mixed false documents with authentic ones to “sow doubt and disinformation.”

Sunday’s election is seen as the most important in France for decades, with two diametrically opposed views of Europe and the country’s place in the world at stake.

Le Pen would close borders and quit the euro currency, while Macron wants closer European cooperation and an open economy.

Voters in some French overseas territories and the Americas were due to cast their ballots on Saturday, a day before voting in France itself. The first polling stations to open at 1000 GMT were in Saint Pierre and Miquelon, islands off Canada.

Others in French Guiana in South America; Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean; the South Pacific islands of French Polynesia and French citizens living elsewhere in the Americas were also due to vote on Saturday.

In France, police union Alternative Police warned in a statement that there was a risk of violence on election day by activists of the far-right or far-left.

Extreme-right student activists burst into the office of Macron’s political movement in the southeastern city of Lyon on Friday evening, setting off smoke grenades and scattering false bank notes bearing Macron’s picture, police said.

France is the latest nation to see a major election overshadowed by allegations of manipulation through cyber hacking after U.S. intelligence agencies said in January that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered hacking of parties tied to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to influence the election on behalf of Republican Donald Trump.

Vitali Kremez, director of research with New York-based cyber intelligence firm Flashpoint, told Reuters his review indicated that APT 28, a group tied to the GRU, the Russian military intelligence directorate, was behind the leak.

Macron’s campaign has previously complained about attempts to hack its emails, blaming Russian interests in part for the cyber attacks.

The Kremlin has denied it was behind any such attacks, although Macron’s camp renewed complaints against Russian media and a hackers’ group operating in Ukraine.

(Additional reporting by Bate Felix, Andrew Callus, Myriam Rivet, and Michel Rose in Paris, Catherine Lagrange in Lyon, Jim Finkle in Toronto and Eric Auchard in Frankfurt; Editing by Alexander Smith)