MADRID, 11 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The new Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, announced this Saturday that Australia will pay 555 million euros to the French company Naval Group as compensation for canceling in September 2021 an agreement of 38,000 million euros for the sale of twelve submarines.
“The previous government made the decision to terminate the contract … for the Australian Defense Force. (Now) We have reached a fair and equitable settlement of €555 million (around AU$830 million) with Naval Group,” Albanese detailed in a statement.
In this way, the Government of Australia seeks to “move forward” with the relationship with France, which had been affected after the previous Executive agreed to create an alliance for the purchase and sale of submarines with the United Kingdom and the United States, known as AUKUS.
Albanese has assured that, “now that the matter is resolved”, the relationship between Australia and France can “move forward”. “Australia and France share deep historical ties of friendship, forged through common sacrifice in war,” added the Australian Prime Minister.
Likewise, the Australian president has highlighted that both countries are “vibrant democracies, committed to the defense of Human Rights”, as well as the “role and active commitment of France” in the Indo-Pacific.
“Given the seriousness of the challenges we face both in the region and globally, it is essential that Australia and France once again come together to uphold our shared principles and interests: the primacy of international law, respect for sovereignty, the rejection of all forms of coercion, as well as taking decisive action against climate change”, added Albanese.
The President of France, Emmanuel Macron, went so far as to accuse then-Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison in November 2021 of lying to him about the frustrated sale of submarines after the creation of AUKUS.
“I have a lot of respect for your country. I have a lot of respect and a lot of friendship for your people. I simply say that when there is respect, you have to be sincere and you have to behave consistently with it,” said Macron, who lamented in an interview with the newspaper ‘The Sydney Morning Herald’ that the “relationship of trust” between the two countries was broken.
For his part, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, acknowledged a short time later before Macron that the crisis unleashed by the frustrated sale of submarines was the result of “a clumsiness” by the White House, in a gesture that the French president accepted as the starting point for the strengthening of the bilateral relationship with an eye “towards the future”.
