There was one person missing in Paris on Saturday evening as France celebrated the resurrection of Notre Dame cathedral. The original guest list included Ursula von der Leyen – but the president of the EU Commission was a no-show. According to whom one believes, Europe’s most powerful politician didn’t take her place in the pew alongside Emmanuel Macron, Donald Trump et al because of what a spokesman described as an ‘internal miscommunication’.
That’s the diplomatic take. The other story is that a ‘furious’ Macron withdrew von der Leyen’s invitation after she signed off the EU Mercosur trade deal with South America on Friday. Struck with Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia, the agreement paves the way for tariff reductions and easier market access with Europe. A report in the French newspaper L’Opinion says the president of France took the news ‘very badly’ and retaliated by disinviting von der Leyen from the reopening of Notre Dame, five years after the cathedral was ravaged by fire.
Negotiations for the trade deal began in 1999 so why protest now?
The conclusion of the Mercosur deal had angered the political class in France, achieving the unusual feat of uniting the left and the right.
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