Will France follow Britain out of the EU?

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In his first interview since he was elected as French president last month, Macron told the Guardian and seven other European papers: “Pragmatism will determine our new relationship” with Britain.

Asked if the door really remained open for Britain to go back on Brexit – after his recent remarks, taken as an encouraging sign by opponents of a hard Brexit, that there may be room for compromise – Macron said: “The door is open until the moment you walk through it. It’s not up to me to say it’s closed. But from the moment things are engaged with a timescale and an objective, it’s very hard to go back, we can’t lie to ourselves.”

Macron was firm on the Brexit negotiation process that began this week. He said: “I want the discussions that have just started to be perfectly coordinated at a European level. I do not want bilateral discussions, because the interests of the EU must be preserved in the short, medium and long term.”

He also said migration cooperation at the border in Calais would change as part of a rethinking of refugee and asylum policy.

In a wide-ranging interview as he prepared for his first European council meeting with European leaders in Brussels on Thursday, Macron said:

• France and Germany would lead on closer European integration with more social protection to win back the confidence of doubting lower middle classes across the bloc.

• Central and eastern European and smaller states had to respect democratic values and couldn’t just view Europe “as a supermarket”.

• Chemical weapons use and disrespect of humanitarian corridors in Syria were “red lines” and France was prepared to act alone in response.

• He would engage with Donald Trump and sought the US’s return to the Paris climate accords.

Macron insisted that France would “strengthen” defence cooperation with the British and work more closely than before on joint counter-terrorism, “because our destinies are linked: terrorists groups don’t know European borders”.

But on bilateral migration agreements with Britain, he said: “I want our cooperation to evolve.” Referring to the sprawling migrant shanty camps at Calais that the French government shut down last year, he said: “We absolutely must avoid creating new flashpoint migrant camps.”
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JULY 27, 2017 / 7:12 AM
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Russian intelligence agents attempted to spy on President Emmanuel Macron's election campaign earlier this year by creating phony Facebook personas, according to a U.S. congressman and two other people briefed on the effort.

About two dozen Facebook accounts were created to conduct surveillance on Macron campaign officials and others close to the centrist former financier as he sought to defeat far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen and other opponents in the two-round election, the sources said. Macron won in a landslide in May.

Facebook said in April it had taken action against fake accounts that were spreading misinformation about the French election. But the effort to infiltrate the social networks of Macron officials has not previously been reported.

Russia has repeatedly denied interfering in the French election by hacking and leaking emails and documents. U.S. intelligence agencies told Reuters in May that hackers with connections to the Russian government were involved, but they did not have conclusive evidence that the Kremlin ordered the hacking.

Facebook confirmed to Reuters that it had detected spying accounts in France and deactivated them. It credited a combination of improved automated detection and stepped-up human efforts to find sophisticated attacks.

Company officials briefed congressional committee members and staff, among others, about their findings. People involved in the conversations also said the number of Facebook accounts suspended in France for promoting propaganda or spam - much of it related to the election - had climbed to 70,000, a big jump from the 30,000 account closures the company disclosed in April.

Facebook did not dispute the figure.