My guest is Philip Etienne.

Philip Etienne is the ambassador of France to United States.

Before that, he was the diplomatic advisor and Sherpa of President Macron in Paris.

Before that, he was France's ambassador to Germany.

And before that, he was the permanent representative of France to the European Union.

Welcome to the podcast, Philip.

Thank you. Thank you, Paul. I'm going to start, if I may, Philipp, by going back a few months to

September last year and the famous Orcus situation. And I think I'm right in saying you were the

first ambassador of France, the United States, who was recalled back to Paris by the president

because the tensions were rising quite high.

Is that a fair representation of what happened?

Yes, with one slight nuance.

I was the first ambassador who was recalled for consultations to Paris.

And the reason was that we wanted to express our disappointment about not only the

result of this new project for France but also about the way it had been handled.

Right and what did President Macron seek to achieve by making this statement?

We wanted to make our American allies aware of this gravity of this behavior between allies lives and our message was understood.

We had with the United States at least, maybe more quickly than with the two other partners in Ocus.

We had a very, very quick conversation at the highest level.

The President of the United States reached out to the President of France.

They talked very rapidly on the phone and even twice, and then they met in Rome at the

end of October.

...