French officials vent fury over Australian leak of Macron text message
Confidence shattered by ‘crude’ leak of president’s message to prime minister Scott Morrison, says adviser
Emmanuel
Macron, the French president, had texted Australia’s prime minister to
ask whether he could expect good or bad news on their submarine deal. Photograph: John Thys/AP
Elysée officials have expressed fury at the decision of Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, to leak a private text message from the French president, Emmanuel Macron, as the diplomatic rift between the two countries deepened.
“Confidence has been completely shattered,” a close adviser to Macron told French media
on Tuesday. “Disclosing a text message exchange between heads of state
or government is a pretty crude and unconventional tactic.”
The
adviser told Le Parisien that it “would never even enter the head” of
the French president to disclose communications of this kind. “It is not
the kind of thing that is likely to improve relations between France and Australia,” they said.
In the text, two days before the announcement of the Aukus
security partnership and the cancellation of a major French contract to
supply submarines to Australia, Macron asked Morrison whether he could
expect good or bad news on the submarines.
Its publication came after Macron told reporters he “knew” that Morrison had lied to him over plans with the US and the UK to acquire nuclear-propelled submarines. Morrison rejected the claim and said he was “not going to cop sledging of Australia”.
French
media described the text message leak as “spectacular and extremely
rare”, saying it appeared to be aimed at demonstrating that Macron had
already been informed the contract might not go ahead even before it was
torn up.
But the Elysée official insisted the
text showed rather that Macron “did not know what stage the discussions
had got to” just two days before Australia called off the A$90bn (£49bn)
deal for 12 conventionally powered submarines.
A
second French government source told Agence-France Presse that if a
message existed that clearly showed that Macron did in fact know, “they
would have reported that instead”. The source added: “We knew the
Australians had some issues, but they only concerned technical aspects
and the timetable, as with every big contract.”
It
was precisely those issues that the text message referred to, ahead of a
discussion with submarine manufacturer Naval Group planned for the
following day, the source said. It is not clear what response Morrison
gave to the message.
The Elysée also rejected
Canberra’s account that it made multiple attempts to contact Paris to
warn of the impending announcement. The official told Le Parisien only
one phone call had come through to the palace, at 11am on a Wednesday –
during Macron’s weekly cabinet meeting.
“It is
difficult to believe that the Australian prime minister has not been
advised of this constraint,” the official said. “He knew very well the
president was unavailable.”
It was later that
same day, the adviser said, that Paris had learned that the contract was
being rescinded and that a press conference was to be held during the
afternoon. “It’s a curious way of going about things,” the Elysée source
told Le Parisien.
“France
was left with no opportunity to respond or to come up with a
counter-proposition, which we had the means to do. Once again, it is not
the choice that we denounce – that’s a sovereign decision. It’s the way
of doing things.”
The Elysée also said that
Morrison could have sought a reconciliatory meeting with Macron in
recent days, at the G20 meeting in Rome or the Cop26 climate summit in
Glasgow. “The president was waiting for a proposition from the prime
minister, which did not come,” the source said.
Morrison
spoke with Macron by phone last week, and the French president used
that call to urge the Australian government to propose concrete steps to
repair the relationship.
Morrison insists that
he “made very clear” to Macron at a dinner in Paris in mid-June “that a
conventional diesel-powered submarine was not going to meet Australia’s
strategic requirements”.
But the Australian
prime minister also said he wasn’t at liberty at that stage to disclose
to Macron that Australia would work with the US and the UK to acquire
nuclear-powered submarines, because those plans had not yet been
finalised and were held “in confidence”.