The island off the coast of Canada that Macron is protecting from Trump’s clutches

Paris. On Saturday, the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, landed in Saint-Pierre and Miquelon for a three-day visit aimed at emphasising the archipelago’s status as part of France and strengthening ties with Canada against a backdrop of an energy supply crisis caused by the conflict in the Middle East and the trade war between Ottawa and Washington. Saint-Pierre and Miquelon is France’s last outpost in North America, a strip of land inhabited by just under six thousand people but which, in a world of spheres of influence, holds strategic importance for Paris thanks to its location on the doorstep of the United States and the Arctic. “We both believe that our countries are two great independent nations and that they wish to remain so,” Macron said on Sunday whilst receiving Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in Saint-Pierre and Miquelon.

U.S. President Donald Trump regularly threatens Canada with annexation, and in early September he posted a map on social media showing the U.S. flag covering the United States, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, with the caption ‘United States of America’. Trump’s map also included Saint-Pierre and Miquelon and the French territories in the Caribbean: a provocation that did not go down well with the occupant of the Élysée Palace. On Saturday, shortly after landing in Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, Macron stated that the archipelago is French – c’est une évidence – and that one cannot have to reaffirm this every morning simply because someone “has strange ideas or says strange things”. Then yesterday, alongside Carney, he reiterated that “across the whole region we face a challenge, and that is to ensure we are respected”, referring to the tensions caused by Trump’s expansionist ambitions. At a time when we are witnessing a ‘breakdown’ of the post-war world order, when ‘our societies are shaken by new storms’, by the ‘upheavals caused by climate change, the erosion of democratic norms and new threats to our sovereignty’, Canada is choosing Europe and France, the Canadian Prime Minister echoed – six days after the speech by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who raised the possibility of Ottawa becoming the EU’s first associate member. The French overseas territory plays a key role, in particular, in the new cooperation between France and Canada in the energy, fisheries and space sectors.

“We must work together to ensure the security of our energy supplies and keep fuel prices under control. Canadian projects relating to liquefied natural gas are important for Europe and can help open up new prospects. We have launched a bilateral dialogue on very concrete projects,” Macron assured, adding that further discussions would take place, particularly at the G7 summit on energy, “which will be organised very soon”. Macron is therefore looking to Canada, a major exporter of liquefied natural gas, to tackle the energy crisis in France and Europe, but also to revitalise the fisheries sector in Saint-Pierre and Miquelon through “smarter cooperation” with Ottawa. “At present, not all the biomass available in the exclusive economic zone is being exploited and, above all, it is not being processed,” Macron said.

In the ‘new chapter’ envisaged by the French President for Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, the space sector will play a central role. The archipelago is already home to a ground station for the European satellite navigation system Galileo, and two French start-ups – Skynopy, which specialises in ground-to-satellite communications, and Look Up Space, which monitors orbital activities – are set to establish themselves there to develop their projects. Saint-Pierre and Miquelon also hopes to be on the route of a digital cable project being developed by the company Scles, which would link Brittany to New York and enable it to guarantee secure data flows in the space domain. All these investments, Macron said, “demonstrate the island’s strategic importance”.