French President Emmanuel Macron hosted German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at a working dinner on Monday evening, during which the two men continued “close coordination in response to the war in Ukraine.”
The business dinner came a week after a private dinner between Macron and Schultz in June in the Bavarian Alps on the sidelines of the G7 summit.
The leaders of France and Germany, together with Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, traveled to Kyiv on June 16 to express their support for Ukraine and for the country to become a candidate state for membership in the European Union. In Paris, Macron and Schultz discussed on Monday evening “the most important current issues at the international, European and bilateral levels.”
According to Schulz’s spokesman Steven Huybetsert, the agenda for the Paris working dinner included ways to ensure European independence in the areas of “energy, defense and strategic raw materials”, as well as other issues, including the situation in the Sahel region and the upcoming meeting of the Franco-German cabinet .
The representative of Germany explained that “this type of negotiation helps to strengthen and deepen confidence”, especially after the NATO and G7 summits.