Statement to the press by Jean-Yves Le Drian, Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, following the European Union Foreign Affairs Council (Paris, 18 May 2021) Share
Ladies and gentlemen,
The Foreign Affairs Council meeting is not over, but given diary constraints, as I need to join the President of the Republic at the Conference on the Financing of African Economies, I would still like to seize this opportunity to talk to you. The President may come back to this subject when he talks to the press later.
What I really want to say is both a personal and a political belief. What is happening – these moments of great violence – shows that the idea that some entertained for a while, that we could simply ignore the conflict in the Middle East and that it would go away on its own, on the basis that things would sort themselves out with time if we pretended to forget they existed, is disappearing. It was a fancy of the mind and, on the contrary, reality is returning, violently.