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BERLIN — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will meet French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday night in Paris for a dinner to discuss European Union and China policy.
The clandestine meeting of two heavyweight EU leaders, which comes just days ahead of a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Europe, is being described as a semi-private event: Scholz and his wife, Britta Ernst, are on a short vacation in the French capital, where they will meet Macron and his wife Brigitte in a French restaurant.
No advisers will participate, according to three people with knowledge of the dinner, who were granted anonymity as they are not allowed to speak publicly.
Scholz and Macron have repeatedly clashed in recent years, most recently in February when the French president opened the door to potentially sending ground troops to Ukraine, which the chancellor strongly rejected.
A key topic of the discussion will be the visit of Xi, who arrives in France on Sunday for three days before heading to Serbia and Hungary. The dinner will be a chance for Scholz to brief Macron about his meeting with Xi in Beijing last month. Scholz and Macron also disagree on the potential imposition of EU tariffs on subsidized Chinese electric vehicles.
According to the German Marshall Fund’s Noah Barkin, who first reported on the dinner, Macron will try to convince the chancellor to join him for his meeting with Xi next week, alongside European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Another likely dinner topic will be EU politics, particularly defense and its financing. Macron is strongly pushing for so-called defense bonds, which would involve the joint European issuing of debt to bankroll military investments.
Scholz has so far rejected the idea.
