Reuters.- European Union foreign ministers will debate on Monday Australia’s retraction of a $ 40 billion submarine order with France, a decision that prompted the president of the European Council to question the loyalty of the United States.
The meeting will take place on the sidelines of the annual meeting of world leaders of the United Nations General Assembly in New York at 22:00 GMT, a spokesman for the European Commission told reporters in Brussels.
Australia said last week that it would cancel an order for conventional submarines from France and instead build at least eight with US and British nuclear technology, after establishing a security partnership with those countries under the name AUKUS.
It is unclear whether the dispute will have implications for the next round of trade talks between the EU and Australia, scheduled for October 12.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell met with Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne in New York on Monday.
Borrell “was interested in the lack of prior consultations and regretted that this association excludes European partners, which have a strong presence in the Pacific,” said his spokesman.
European Council President Charles Michel told reporters in New York that he was finding it difficult to understand the move.
“Why? Because with the new Joe Biden government, America is back. This was the historic message sent by this new administration and now we have questions. What does it mean that the United States is back? Has the United States returned to the United States or elsewhere? We don’t know, ”he said.
If China was Washington’s main target, it was “very strange” for the United States to partner with Australia and Britain, he said, a decision that, he argued, weakens the transatlantic alliance.
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“It is very strange to leave Europe out of the game in the Indo-Pacific region,” said Michel. “The elementary principles of an alliance are loyalty and transparency (…) this was not the choice our ally made.”
Senior officials from the United States and the European Union are scheduled to meet in Pittsburgh later this month for the inaugural meeting of the newly created US-EU Trade and Technology Council, but Michel said members of the union were calling for it to be postponed.
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