UNITED NATIONS, Sept 20 (Reuters) – President Emmanuel Macron visits the French territory of Saint Pierre and Miquelon on Sunday, where he is due to meet Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump posted an image on social media showing the archipelago covered by the American flag.
Macron’s visit, the first by a French president since Francois Hollande travelled there in 2014, comes as Canada seeks to deepen ties with the European Union amid trade tensions with the United States and a deterioration in relations with Washington under Trump.
Located off Canada’s Atlantic coast, Saint Pierre and Miquelon is France’s only remaining territory in North America. French officials said the trip would underscore France’s sovereignty over the archipelago and highlight its close relationship with Canada.
“For a territory of 5,800 inhabitants, it is rare to find so many issues that are important for France as a whole concentrated in a place of this size: France’s geostrategic presence in the North Atlantic, at the doorstep of the United States and the Arctic, maritime sovereignty, adaptation to climate change; and cooperation with Canada,” a French presidency official told reporters.
Diplomats said the visit, which Macron was undertaking on his way to the annual United Nations General Assembly gathering of world leaders, would also carry symbolic weight after Trump posted a map depicting the United States, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean draped in the U.S. flag and labelled “United States of America”.
The image included Saint Pierre and Miquelon and several French Caribbean territories.
France chose not to publicly respond to the post at the time.
Macron and Carney are expected to discuss the energy crisis and Canada’s increasingly close relationship with the European Union after the bloc opened the door to Ottawa becoming its first associate member.
Any move towards deeper integration is likely to face hurdles. More than a decade after the EU and Canada agreed the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), and nine years after its provisional application began, several EU member states have yet to ratify the accord, including France.
(Reporting by John Irish; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama )
