Europe20 September, 20262 min read
Emmanuel Macron Meets Mark Carney in Saint Pierre and Miquelon After Donald Trump Map
This article is an automated aggregation of coverage from news outlets. Our editorials offer in-depth analysis curated by the NewsCord team.
Macron and Canadian PM Mark Carney met in Saint Pierre and Miquelon for talks. Macron stated Saint Pierre and Miquelon is French in response to Trump's map.
6 outlets told this the same way.
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Macron asserts French sovereignty
President Emmanuel Macron arrived in the French territory of Saint Pierre and Miquelon for talks with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Sunday, weeks after President Donald Trump posted an image showing the islands covered by the US flag. Macron said, "There's no doubt (it is French)," after landing in the territory of 5,800 inhabitants late on Saturday, and he added, "We are not going to affirm it every day because people have strange ideas or say strange things."
Reuters said Saint Pierre and Miquelon is France's only remaining territory in North America, and French officials said Macron's trip would underscore French sovereignty and highlight close ties with Canada. The Reuters report also said the visit comes as Canada seeks closer ties with the European Union amid an increasingly acrimonious trade war with the United States, with energy cooperation among issues in focus for the meeting on Sunday.
EU ties and LNG focus
The Reuters account said Macron's visit to the archipelago off Canada's Atlantic coast is the first there by a French president since 2014, and it described the trip as having symbolic weight after Trump's social media post. Reuters reported that Macron said he would like Canada to broaden its exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe rather than primarily Asia, and it said the two leaders would also discuss Canada's ties with the EU after the bloc opened the door to Ottawa becoming its first associate member.
The South China Morning Post likewise said Macron was facing pressure over rising fuel prices and that he wanted Canada to broaden LNG exports to Europe rather than Asia as he arrived for talks with Mark Carney on Sunday. In the same Reuters report, diplomats said any move toward deeper integration is likely to face hurdles, noting that more than a decade after the EU and Canada agreed the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, and nine years after its provisional application began, several EU member states have yet to ratify the accord, including France.
Climate vulnerability and relocation
Reporterre described Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon as an archipelago threatened by submersion, saying the coastline has retreated by 50 to 90 meters between 1952 and 2017 according to estimates from the Directorate of Territories, Food and the Sea. It said the Miquelon-Langlade isthmus is a thin 12-km-long strip of sand connecting Langlade in the south to Miquelon in the north, and it quoted Sébastien Lévêque saying, "We observe that every year it recedes by four to six meters."
Reporterre also said the relocation of the village of Miquelon is underway, with the town currently located barely two meters above sea level and facing marine submersion by 2100, and it added that it will be rebuilt 1.5 km away. The report said the project would require about 25 million euros in state investment between 2027 and 2031, and it noted that during Macron's visit on September 20 he could announce the unlocking of new resources to speed up its relocation.