French President Emanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese President Xi Jinping talked today via video link about climate, economic and health issues, as well as the re-establishment of air connections, the French presidency announced.

 

Those issues were already the topic of their previous conversation in that format in mid-April.

The Xinhua news agency stated that the Chinese president pledged that relations between the big countries would be “stable and balanced.”

“China wants to develop the most, and not to take the place of others,” he said, the Chinese agency reported.

Merkel and Macron have asked China to cut off funding for coal-fired power plants and to support the Coalition for Nature and Peoples, for the development of biodiversity, which seeks to reach an agreement on biodiversity conservation.

Although the investment agreement between the EU and China was blocked in the European Parliament, two European leaders reminded of European expectations about the access of European companies to the Chinese market, with equal conditions of competition, the French presidency stated.

They also demanded the re-establishment of air connections. For France, those connections fell from more than 100 flights a week before the Covid-19 pandemic to the current six a week.

They once again expressed concern over the human rights situation in China and reminded of the demands when it comes to forced labor.

The Chinese leader pointed out that the pandemic has not been defeated yet and that the prospects for reconstruction are uncertain, the Chinese public television CCTV reported.

China has also expressed expectations that the European Union will provide its companies with an equal and non-discriminatory environment.