My guest is Pierre Desmondant in a 38-year diplomatic career with a French Foreign Service,

Pierre Vimont has served as ambassador to the United States from 2007, 2010, prior to that he was

ambassador to the European Union, a permanent representative from 1999 to 2002, and as chief of staff to three former

French foreign ministers. He was the first ever executive secretary general of the European

External Action Service, and now he is a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe and teaches at

Columbia University in New York. Welcome to the podcast, Pierre.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. Right. Well, you have so much to talk about that the challenge

will be to focus on the key item of this chat for the next 25 minutes. I'd like to start,

though, if I may, Pierre, with talking about the role of France inside the European Union in

particular. this is paradox

seen from the outside, at least, that France seems rather dysfunctional at the moment domestically,

which is not a common sight to many observers from the outside and a weakened president for some

time now, not just quite recently. However, despite all that, he seems, and France seems more broadly, to be as

influential as ever within the European Union. Do you agree with that assessment?

Yes, to some extent. I mean, I agree with you on the domestic front. I think, you know,

the political situation in France has changed a lot in a rather paradoxical way,

because Macron was re-elected in 2022, which was a bit of a performance

because his two predecessors didn't manage to get re-elected.

So he was re-elected in 2022, which made him a very strong president, thanks to that.

But soon after that, he lost the parliamentary election, the legislative election in 2022.

And therefore, his government had no majority in the House, in the French National Assembly. And worse than that, he went, as you know,

last year in 2024, in fact, for a dissolution. He decided to go for a snap election.

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