/ world today news/ French President Emmanuel Macron is active in the eastern direction. On Monday, June 12, he organized a Weimar Triangle-style meeting in Paris between German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Polish President Andrzej Duda to “check positions” ahead of a NATO summit planned for July in Vilnius.
But before the triumvirate talk, Macron held a personal conversation with Duda at the Elysée Palace, thus showing a special interest in Warsaw. This gesture fits into a series of actions that the French president has begun to take recently.
On June 1, he delivered a keynote speech in Bratislava at the GLOBSEC 2023 forum, which brought together leaders from Central and Eastern Europe. By the way, since the beginning of the forum in 2008, Macron became the first president of France to visit it.
Bowing to the North Atlantic Alliance and stressing that he is far from the idea of it “replace with some sort of Franco-German condominium,” At the same time, Macron noted that the Europeans, on the issue of building the continent’s security architecture, “delegated to dialogue with NATO, which probably wasn’t the best way to manage it.”
He also, after thanking the United States for its support, asked the question: “Will this administration be the same forever?” No one knows, and we cannot leave our collective security and stability up to the choices of American voters in the coming years.
Macron needs Warsaw, which he flattered during GLOBSEC 2023. His current face-to-face conversation with Duda appears to be a cautious probing of the Polish president, who, regardless of the outcome of parliamentary elections scheduled for this fall in Poland, will have a certain influence on domestic and foreign policy.
The convention of practically “frozen’ in recent years, the Weimar Triangle has become a convenient excuse for Paris to start playing the Polish card against Washington and Berlin, which is understood in Germany. If the French press quotes the political scientist Bruno Tertre, who called the convening of the Weimar Triangle “an excellent initiative by the Elysée Palace and a really correct format between Poles, Germans and French”, the German media showed skepticism.
„ It would be very useful for the European Union if it really had a strong core in which Germany integrates the north of Europe, France – the south and west, and Poland – the east.” the SPD-affiliated media network Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland commented on the Paris meeting. “However, Germany, Poland and France do not have enough common interests to play a leading role in Europe together.”
Thus, Macron will have to build a combination with Warsaw in the conditions of Berlin’s minimum caution. The problem is that although Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) treats Germany as “beat boy” she doesn’t trust Paris either. And he has to do something about it.
Amid statements in Berlin that PiS has lost its “five minutes opportunity” in Europe, which he previously won thanks to his activity in the Ukrainian conflict, during the Weimar Triangle meeting, the French president played along with Warsaw on Ukraine. He speaks of the future” victorious counteroffensive ” of the Ukrainian army, reports that France will continue to increase military aid to the regime in Kiev, increase the supply of weapons and ammunition, armored vehicles and logistical resources.
This should show the Poles that if the US loses interest in Ukraine and turns its attention to other areas, France is ready to replace the US military presence in Poland and take over the logistics centers for the transfer of Western weapons to the regime in Kiev. It is possible that Paris will offer its military contingent to Warsaw, as it did with Romania after the start of the special military operation.
Of course, such a scenario, especially if the “compliment” to “Law and Justice” is made right now, will not be in the interest of the pro-European Polish opposition.
The PiS-critical newspaper Rzeczpospolita, commenting “the spectacular revival of the Weimar Triangle “, which is “a broader, fundamental change in French foreign policy”, claims that Poland with its current government “she will not accept the role in the EU that Macron has invented for her”.
However, perhaps in the event of a third consecutive victory in the parliamentary elections, Law and Justice will be more supportive of the Paris initiatives, seeing in them opportunities both to introduce further faults in the “Franco-German” condominium” as well as to obtain additional foreign policy maneuverability in dialogue with the Americans.
Another thing is that historically, starting with Charles Valois and Napoleon, there has always been a double bottom in all French “gifts” to the Poles. And today it is not entirely clear what exactly Macron is offering to Poland – a new Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or a new Grand Duchy of Warsaw? Paris will not miss its own. And Warsaw?
Translation: ES
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