Australia – Return of the French Ambassador to Canberra (Oct. 7 2021)

Following the announcements made on September 15 by Australia and the United States, Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian recalled our ambassador to Australia at President Macron’s request for consultations on the strategic consequences of those announcements and the conclusions to be drawn from them.

Those in-depth consultations were held over the past three weeks. The deep crisis of confidence created by the Australian decision will take a long time to resolve and will require concrete actions.

Yesterday the minister asked our ambassador to return to Australia with two specific missions: to help redefine the terms of our bilateral relationship moving forward, considering all the consequences of the major breakdown of trust in the Australian government, and to strongly defend our interests in the concrete implementation of the Australian decision to end the future submarine program.