German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will meet with French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday evening in Paris to discuss European Union and China policy. The meeting will take place a few days before Chinese leader Xi Jinping's trip to France, Politico newspaper reported, citing sources, UNN reported.
Details
Politico describes the secret meeting between the two EU leaders as a "semi-private event." Scholz and his wife are on a short vacation in the French capital, where they will meet with Macron and his wife at a French restaurant.
According to three people with knowledge of the dinner, none of the leaders' advisers will attend.
A key topic of discussion will be the visit of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who arrives in France on Sunday for three days before traveling to Serbia and Hungary. According to Politico, the dinner will be an opportunity for Scholz to tell Macron about his meeting with Xi in Beijing last month.
According to Noah Barkin of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, who first reported on the dinner, Macron will try to convince the chancellor to join him at a meeting with Xi next week, along with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Another likely topic of the dinner will be EU policy, in particular, defense and its financing. Macron is pushing for the creation of so-called defense bonds, which would involve Europeans issuing debt to finance military investments. Scholz has so far rejected this idea.
Politico notes that Scholz and Macron have clashed repeatedly in recent years, most recently in February, when the French president began talking about potentially sending ground troops to Ukraine, which the chancellor strongly rejected.