STOCKHOLM (AP) – French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday marked the start of a two-day state visit to Sweden where he is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and the Scandinavian country’s monarch, King Carl XVI Gustaf. was welcomed.
President Macron and his wife Brigitte were received by the King in the courtyard of the Royal Castle in downtown Stockholm, the official residence of the Swedish royal family. There, Macron and Carl Gustav spotted members of the Grenadier Guards lined up.
Macron pointed out that it has been quite some time since a French president visited Sweden, and the last time Jacques Chirac visited the Scandinavian country was in 2000.
“My visit is therefore first and foremost about renewing our friendship and our partnership in the European Union, and as Sweden prepares to join our alliance, NATO. “,” President Macron said.
Mr Macron is scheduled to discuss the future of European security with Mr Kristersson and the king at the military academy in Stockholm later on Tuesday. Russia’s war against Ukraine and Sweden’s application to NATO are likely to be on the table.
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After more than a year of delays, Turkey completed the ratification of Sweden’s bid to join NATO earlier this month. This means that Hungary is the last member of the military alliance to not give recognition. All her NATO countries must agree for a new member state to join the alliance.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Sweden and neighboring Finland abandoned their traditional positions of military non-alignment and sought protection under NATO’s security umbrella. Finland joined the alliance last year.
President Macron and his wife will visit Malmö, Sweden’s third-largest city in southern Sweden, on Wednesday, where they will visit a European multidisciplinary research facility under construction and visit companies to discuss green technology.
At home, Macron’s government is confronting angry farmers camped around Paris. They want better pay, fewer restrictions, and lower costs. On Monday, they surrounded Paris with traffic-snarling barricades and used hundreds of tractors and hay bales to block highways leading into the capital.
The French president was originally scheduled to visit Sweden in late October, but the visit was postponed due to the war in Gaza, which began with the October 7 attack by Hamas in southern Israel.
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