- As Emmanuel Macron says: My handshake with Trump was ‘a moment of truth’
Europe can no longer completely rely on its allies, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday, pointing to bruising meetings of G7 wealthy nations and NATO last week.
Merkel didn’t mention by name U.S. President Donald Trump, who criticized major NATO allies and refused to endorse a global climate change accord, but she said at a packed beer tent in Munich that the days when Europe could completely count on others were “over to a certain extent.”
“I have experienced this in the last few days,” she said. “And that is why I can only say that we Europeans must really take our fate into our own hands — of course in friendship with the United States of America, in friendship with Great Britain and as good neighbors wherever that is possible also with other countries, even with Russia.”
“But we have to know that we must fight for our future on our own, for our destiny as Europeans,” Merkel said.
The two-day G7 summit in Italy pitted Trump against the leaders of Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Japan on several issues, with European diplomats frustrated at having to revisit questions they had hoped were long settled.
The U.S. tycoon-turned-president backed a pledge to fight protectionism at the end of the G7 summit on Saturday, but he refused to endorse the climate pact, saying he needed more time to decide.
But EU Council President Donald Tusk said Sunday that he was more optimistic now than after the U.S. election in November after EU leaders held talks with Trump in Brussels.
“What I am absolutely sure after this meeting is that despite some extraordinary … expressions, behaviors, etc., etc., our partners in the G7 are much more responsible than the first impression after the election in the United States,” Tusk said in the Slovak capital, Bratislava.
At the NATO summit Thursday, Trump intensified his accusations that allies weren’t spending enough on defense and warned of more attacks like last week’s Manchester, England, bombing unless the alliance did more to stop militants.
Turning to France, Merkel said she wished President Emmanuel Macron success, adding to applause: “Where Germany can help, Germany will help, because Germany can only do well if Europe is doing well.”
France is Germany’s second-biggest trading partner, and the presidential election victory of the pro-European centrist reformer Macron over far-right protectionist rival Marine Le Pen in early May has sparked hopes that Berlin will ally with Paris in spearheading a broad-based economic revival in Europe.
In the meantime, as handshakes go, it was unusually intense: a fierce and protracted mano a mano of white knuckles, crunched bones, tightened jaws and fixed smiles that sent the internet and the world’s media into a spin.
It was also, Emmanuel Macron has revealed, entirely intentional. At his first major appearance on the world stage, the 39-year-old French president displayed a relaxed confidence and steely purpose that altogether belied his youth and inexperience.
“My handshake with him – it wasn’t innocent,” Macron told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper in an interview on Sunday. “It’s not the be-all and the end-all of a policy, but it was a moment of truth.”
The much commented-upon power play, during which each man held the other’s gaze for a long moment, was described by one observer as a “screw you in handshake form”. It ended when the US president, after two attempts, finally succeeding in disengaging.
“Donald Trump, the Turkish president or the Russian president see relationships in terms of a balance of power, Macron said. “That doesn’t bother me. I don’t believe in diplomacy by public abuse, but in my bilateral dialogues I won’t let anything pass.”
The French president, who had never held elected office before decisively defeating far-right leader Marine Le Pen in this month’s runoff, added: “That’s how you ensure you are respected. You have to show you won’t make small concessions – not even symbolic ones.”
At home, Macron faces huge challenges. Though recent polls suggest his La République en Marche party is on course to win next month’s general elections, the country remains deeply divided, battling persistent high unemployment and slow economic growth.
But the newly elected leader’s three days in Brussels and at this weekend’s G7 summit in Taormina, Sicily, showed him well able to transfer the optimistic but determined tone he brought to his presidential campaign to a bigger arena.
He is eager to cultivate a more dignified, presidential image for the office, making clear – though without spelling it out – he feels the bling-obsessed excesses of Nicolas Sarkozy and gossipy intimacy of François Hollande, his two immediate predecessors, had combined to diminish it.
Macron and Trump met for the first time for lunch before a gathering of European and Nato leaders in Brussels last Thursday. They confronted each other again later that afternoon, on a blue welcome carpet outside Nato headquarters.
During that encounter, Macron pointedly swerved past Trump to embrace German chancellor Angela Merkel. He then shook hands with the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, and Belgian prime minister, Charles Michel, before finally greeting the US leader.
Seemingly out for revenge, Trump responded by yanking the French president’s hand hard towards him in an apparent attempt to re-establish dominance – a technique he has been seen applying in the past, notably with the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe.
NBC with additional report from Guardian
