TOURMALET PASS, France — France’s president hosted China’s leader on Tuesday at a remote mountain pass in the Pyrenees for private meetings after a high-stakes state visit to Paris dominated by trade disputes and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
French President Emmanuel Macron made a point of inviting Chinese President Xi Jinping to the Tourmalet Pass near the Spanish border, where Macron spent time as a child visiting his grandmother. It is supposed to be a reciprocal gesture after Xi took Macron last year to the governor’s residence of Guangdong province, where the Chinese president’s father once lived.
Snow covered nearby slopes after further snowfall overnight, and security in the area was tightened. The winding roads to the pass were blocked by authorities for dozens of kilometers on Tuesday.
Fog, snow and strong winds obscured the view of the spectacular Tourmalet Pass. Macron and Xi, along with their wives, Brigitte Macron and Peng Liyuan, visited a mountain restaurant. Before lunch, protected from the elements by umbrellas, they attended a traditional folk dance performance on the terrace. The leaders could be seen eating ham and blueberry pie, among other local specialties.
Macron gave Xi a yellow Tour de France t-shirt (the Tourmalet pass is one of the race’s most famous climbs), a wool blanket made in the Pyrenees and a bottle of Armagnac, French broadcaster BFMTV said. .
The mountain meetings come after a grand state visit by Xi on Monday that included a welcome ceremony at the monument housing Napoleon’s tomb and a state dinner at the Elysee Palace with celebrities and tycoons.
Xi left France from the Pyrenees on Tuesday night by plane, in an departure ceremony that included military fanfare.
The Elysée on Tuesday welcomed the dialogue between Macron and Xi, which was “friendly but also very frank”, according to BFMTV. The broadcaster also recalled that Macron had raised the issue of human rights with the Chinese president, including “some individual cases.”
Xi is on a trip to Europe aimed at revitalizing relations at a time of global tensions. He heads alongside Serbia and Hungary.
The final day of his visit to France came as authorities searched the European Parliament office of a prominent far-right German lawmaker in Brussels on Tuesday, Germany’s top prosecutor’s office said.
Maximilian Krah, the Alternative for Germany party’s leading candidate in the upcoming European Parliament elections, has been under scrutiny after an aide of his was arrested last month on suspicion of spying for China.
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