Macron says no G7 meeting ‘scheduled’ this week

AFP | Davos

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French President Emmanuel Macron said yesterday that there was no G7 summit scheduled this week, after US President Donald Trump revealed a message proposing a meeting on Ukraine and Greenland.

“No meeting is scheduled. The French presidency is willing to hold one,” Macron told AFP in brief remarks after he delivered a speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Trump posted the “private message” from the French leader suggesting a G7 meeting in Paris on his Truth Social network earlier on Tuesday. A White House official told AFP that Trump has “no plans to travel to Paris at this time”. The US president is set to arrive in Davos on Wednesday and leave on Thursday.

It came as European countries are weighing countermeasures after Trump threatened to impose tariffs on eight of them in an attempt to pressure the European Union over Greenland.

“My friend, we are totally in line on Syria. We can do great things on Iran. I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland,” Macron said in his message.

Trump is demanding to seize the Arctic island, a sovereign territory of Denmark, from the United States’s Nordic NATO ally.

“I can set up a G7 meeting after Davos in Paris on Thursday afternoon,” Macron wrote, referring to this week’s gathering of global elites in Switzerland. “I can invite the Ukrainians, the Danish, the Syrians and the Russians in the margins” of the meeting, he added.

The G7 comprises Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States. The 27-nation EU also participates.

Asked by AFP whether Russia had received any invitation for the proposed meeting, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov replied: “No, it has not.”

Trump’s relations with Macron hit a new low on Monday when the US president threatened 200-percent tariffs on French wine over France’s intention to decline an invitation to join his “Board of Peace” aimed at resolving international conflicts -- where a permanent spot will cost $1 billion, according to Trump.

“Tariff threats to influence our foreign policy are unacceptable and ineffective,” a source close to Macron told AFP on Tuesday.