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POLITICS

UK opposition chief Starmer talks security, energy, Ukraine and Europe with Macron

British opposition chief Keir Starmer on Tuesday held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, seeking to enhance his standing as a potential international leader with the Labour Party increasingly confident it can take over from Britain's ruling Conservatives.

UK opposition chief Starmer talks security, energy, Ukraine and Europe with Macron
UK Labour Leader Keir Starmer. Photo by Minas Panagiotakis / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP

The French president has dealt with no less than four UK Conservative premiers over the last half decade during a period of political turbulence in Britain that has seen surging tensions between Paris and London.

He and Starmer spoke about “the importance of strengthening cooperation between France and the United Kingdom, so that this partnership continues ensuring prosperity and security for the French and British people,” Macron’s Elysée Palace office said in a statement.

More specifically, the pair “discussed the need to guarantee economic and energy security in Europe and reiterated their desire to lend continued support to Ukraine,” the Elysée added.

The closed-door talks at Macron’s Elysee Palace in Paris came as part of a mini-international tour for Starmer.

He visited Europol in The Hague last week and appeared alongside fellow centre-left leaders – including Canada’s Justin Trudeau and former British prime minister Tony Blair – at a weekend gathering in Montreal.

In a Sunday interview billed by the Financial Times as Starmer “stepping onto the global stage”, he told the newspaper he would “attempt to get a much better deal for the UK” with the EU.

The post-Brexit Trade and Cooperation agreement struck by ex-PM Boris Johnson is due for review in 2025.

Starmer, who has been wooing international investors as a potential PM, on Tuesday posted a photo on Twitter with business leaders before seeing Macron.

“My Labour government will provide the economic stability needed for international business to invest in the UK,” he wrote.

France is a partner of rare importance for Britain as an EU heavyweight, close military ally and fellow nuclear power, fellow UN Security Council member and immediate neighbour.

Cross-Channel ties have warmed under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, a former banker like Macron whose relationship with the president has been dubbed a “bromance” by parts of the media.

But with his party struggling in the polls, the Conservative leader must call an election by January 2025 – even as he confronts stubborn challenges including inflation and irregular arrivals of migrants across the Channel.

Even so, Macron’s invitation was “not an endorsement, it’s not going to be a negotiation,” Georgina Wright, a European politics expert at French think-tank Institut Montaigne told AFP ahead of his meeting with Starmer.

“It’s really just a question of meeting and hearing what Labour would do differently and that’s it,” she added, saying Macron would be “as much as he can in listening mode” but may also “highlight France’s priorities”.

“Macron does this all the time” but “never once has he endorsed a candidate” ahead of an overseas election, Wright noted – recalling his meetings with German candidates including now-Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his opponent Armin Laschet ahead of the 2021 election to the Bundestag.

Struggling to make headway on his legislative priorities in a hung parliament, Macron also has a domestic political interest in showing he remains a coveted interlocutor abroad.

Any British-French meeting was likely to include discussion of migration, as one of Sunak’s biggest political headaches is the frequent arrivals in small boats from northern France.

Starmer last week signalled that he would like Britain to join an EU-wide quota system for sharing out migrants.

The arrangement has come under strain following record arrivals on the Italian island of Lampedusa and Germany’s suspension of accepting migrants living in Italy.

Starmer’s trip to France also comes the day before a state visit by King Charles III and Queen Camilla.

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POLITICS

New Caledonia airport to reopen Monday, curfew reduced: authorities

New Caledonia's main international airport will reopen from Monday after being shut last month during a spate of deadly unrest, the high commission in the French Pacific territory said, adding a curfew would also be reduced.

New Caledonia airport to reopen Monday, curfew reduced: authorities

The commission said Sunday that it had “decided to reopen the airport during the day” and to “push back to 8:00 pm (from 6:00 pm) the start of the curfew as of Monday”.

The measures had been introduced after violence broke out on May 13 over a controversial voting reform that would have allowed long-term residents to participate in local polls.

The archipelago’s Indigenous Kanaks feared the move would dilute their vote, putting hopes for eventually winning independence definitively out of reach.

READ ALSO: Explained: What’s behind the violence on French island of New Caledonia?

Barricades, skirmishes with the police and looting left nine dead and hundreds injured, and inflicted hundreds of millions of euros in damage.

The full resumption of flights at Tontouta airport was made possible by the reopening of an expressway linking it to the capital Noumea that had been blocked by demonstrators, the commission said.

Previously the airport was only handling a small number of flights with special exemptions.

Meanwhile, the curfew, which runs until 6:00 am, was reduced “in light of the improvement in the situation and in order to facilitate the gradual return to normal life”, the commission added.

French President Emmanuel Macron had announced on Wednesday that the voting reform that touched off the unrest would be “suspended” in light of snap parliamentary polls.

Instead he aimed to “give full voice to local dialogue and the restoration of order”, he told reporters.

Although approved by both France’s National Assembly and Senate, the reform had been waiting on a constitutional congress of both houses to become part of the basic law.

Caledonian pro-independence movements had already considered reform dead given Macron’s call for snap elections.

“This should be a time for rebuilding peace and social ties,” the Kanak Liberation Party (Palika) said Wednesday before the announcement.

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