FRENCH Ambassador to the Philippines Thierry Mathou recently welcomed select members of the media on board the Le Prarial.
The light-monitoring frigate of the French Marine Nationale was on a weeklong goodwill visit in Manila and docked at Pier 15 during the interview. She is the second ship of the Floréal class, and the other French warship named after the ninth month of the Republican Calendar.
Although categorized as a surveillance ship, Le Prairial is armed with two antiship exocet missiles and a 100-mm gun. She is also furbished with 35 extra berths for marines, and also equipped with navigation radars and a Panther helicopter.
The marine vessel has a crew of more than 100, including 14 officers reporting to Commanding Officer Christophe le Coz. It is the most important French Navy vessel based in Papeete, Tahiti.
Surveillance frigates, such as Le Prairial respond to specific operational needs, such as controlling and monitoring French maritime territories outside its metropolitan area. With a length of 93.50 meters and width of 14 meters, she is made to engage in missions, such as monitoring, information gathering, responding to threats, policing exclusive economic zones and evacuating French nationals.
The vessel was on a routine call in the Philippines as her officials hosted a cocktail party for Philippine military officials led by Defense Secretary Delfin N. Lorenzana.
Mathou said the secretary was invited to attend the French air show in Le Bourget Airport this month.
“We recently invited [him] to visit the air show in Paris; he has accepted, and he is supposed to go there from June 21 to 23. We have important shows every year and in 2016, we had the Euro Naval of the Navy sector.”
The ambassador said there would obviously be a high-level meeting between the secretary and his counterpart, the Minister of the Army.
His arrival in Paris is timely, coming on the heels of the election of their new president, Emmanuel Macron.
Growing bilateral cooperation
ASKED if there would be a new defense accord between the two countries, Mathou said; “It is a starting point.”
He told the BusinessMirror that although trade between the two countries is growing, “we have room to improve”.
“We already want to develop in the agribusiness. Europe and France, in particular, is a big opportunity as a market for the Philippines. As a matter of fact, the continent is the largest market for your products. We consider our relations in this sector from both sides and definitely, economy and trade are the ways we can really develop a partnership.”
“What is interesting and encouraging is that more companies are setting-up branches in the Philippines: not only big companies, but SMEs [small- and medium-scale enterprises] also came here. This is an excellent trend,” he added.
At the moment, there are about 100 French companies doing business locally.
(Currently, there is an estimated 50,000 Filipinos in France, and about 4,000 French in the Philippines. Most Filipinos in the European country are employed in the services sector as skilled professionals.)
Mathou, who was one of the first ambassadors to visit President Duterte following his election last year, said he likes to consider the ties between France and the Philippines, as “global”.
“As I said, we have to encompass our relations in all sectors, including our differences.”
He said the Philippines, during the previous administration, signed the agreement on climate change in 2015, and it would be subject to review and approval by the current administration.
“So, I have to say now that this agreement is totally in-force.”
Despite earlier pronouncements, Duterte had formalized the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Executive Secretary Salvador C. Medialdea said the Chief Executive signed the “Instrument of Accession” on February 28, which is a document signifying the Philippines’s ratification of the historic climate-change agreement.
Sen. Loren B. Legarda received the signed document, who said she would sponsor it for concurrence. Present at the ceremonial transmittal was Deputy Executive Secretary Meynard I. Guevarra, and Legarda, who is the chairman of the Senate Committee on Climate Change. Senate concurrence is the final step in the ratification process.
The envoy said Paris has to enforce the agreement because following the signing in 2015, there were already “exchanges of information, intelligence, discussion on logistics and equipment”.
The Paris climate accord—or Paris climate agreement—was adopted by consensus on December 12, 2015, and out of 195 member-countries, 148 have ratified it. The agreement calls for the reduction of greenhouse gases to mitigate the rise in world temperature by at least 2 degrees Celsius.
“The Philippines has a lot of needs in different sectors, while France actually is a major producer of equipment. We are eager to enter discussions with [your country] to provide whatever it needs.”
However, since Duterte seems ambivalent about the accord, Mathou said Paris is “once again [willing] to enter into different kinds of discussions”.
“Your country faces big challenges, [such as] terrorism, which is true across the world, including France. [We are a] producer of top-quality intelligence, and that is important for our county to exchange on such and many other subjects, like education and trainings,” he said.
Warfare know-how
MATHOU added Paris can provide many things for the Philippine military, and said he is confident the visit of Lorenzana will give them the opportunity to discuss intimately on those matters.
As an added incentive to Lorenzana’s visit, Mathou said the Paris Air Show would be held at Le Bourget, where new line of aircraft would be introduced.
“We already have all our airlines and equipment [for the appreciation of the Philippine delegation. The members are] very interested in our line of equipment. The mission will view the air show and to know exactly what is best suitable for the Air Force here. That would be [a] good opportunity, I guess, for them to see the equipment on site, and for them to see the [products] of other stakeholders.”
This year’s 52nd International Paris Air Show will take place from June 19 to 25 at Le Bourget, a few kilometers north of Paris. It is an international aviation and aerospace exhibition, which is organized every two years by the Salon International de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace, a subsidiary of Groupement des industries françaises aéronautiques et spatiales, the French Aerospace Industries Association. It is one of the oldest and largest air shows in the world, where the newest technologies of the aerospace industry and related equipment, such as aircraft engines, satellite navigation technology, aircraft cabins and seats and weapons systems will be presented.
The exhibition is accompanied by a business-to-business meeting program, where the exchange of knowledge and experiences, in combination with the search for solutions in the aerospace sector, is in the foreground.
Since the 1970s, the show has emerged as a powerful international rival to the Farnborough Air Show in the UK.
Speaking of aircrafts, the French diplomat said the majority of commercial airplanes in the Philippines are made by Airbus.
But since airplanes are not sold “like hotcakes; or cars”, Manila and Paris have to develop trade involving other much in-demand products.
“Ninety percent of the fleet of planes flying in the Philippines is made by Airbus. We do not sell planes every month, even every year, so we have to develop our trade in pharmaceuticals, in agri-business, in services and different sectors,” Mathou said.
Touching on the ongoing strife in Marawi City, Lanao del Sur, Mathou expressed his hopes the Philippines will be able to settle the matter as rapidly as possible.
“Obviously, we’re very concerned, because as I said, this issue of terrorism is a major challenge everywhere in the world. So actually we are on the side of the government of the Philippines to support their peoples to fight against terrorism.”
Slice of history
THE Philippines and France established their diplomatic relations in 1947, one spanning 70 years, but Mathou maintains there is room for growth.
He even reminded his interviewers that decades before that, a prominent Filipino by the name of Jose Rizal spent some time in Paris, “and it was [that city which] introduced the Declaration of Human Rights; so once again, this is part of our common inheritance”.
“The European country also became a significant influence to Filipinos toward the end of the Spanish rule in the country. Aside from Rizal, other rich and intellectual Filipinos came to France around that time, such as Felix Hidalgo and Juan Luna,” according to Wikipedia.
French liberalism had also influenced opposition to the Filipino colonial government. Rizal’s novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo were inspired by Alexander Dumas, which were both written in France, as the French permitted him to live there in exile.
Andres Bonifacio and Emilio Jacinto, the brains behind the Katipunan, were also inspired by the ideas of Jean Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu (Charles-Louis de Secondat) and Napoleon Bonaparte to launch a revolution against the Spanish rulers.
Values between friends
THE ambassador noted, “We developed our relations step by step, from the development of the individual, then the development of our relations in culture. Most recent, we have increased our interactions in the [area of] economic sector.”
The French envoy also noted heightened engagements in “high-tech entrepreneurship” and “good hearts” between both parties.
“Values are important elements of the French DNA, so it is paramount for us to stress the value of democracy [and] human rights.”
He said he thinks these values are also entrenched in the Filipinos, “so it is also something we want to support and share with you”.
Mathou said he considers France as friend of the Philippines, “and this has not changed with the current situation. Between friends, we can talk of everything; so on some issues, we might not be on the same side, we might not agree. But as friends, we have to talk and you have to convince [the other side].”
Ever the diplomat, Mathou’s comment appears to be a polite commentary on Duterte’s war on drugs, which was met with criticism here and abroad.
Asked to comment about Duterte’s style of governance, Mathou said, “You are talking about style; style is style, and I do not have to make any comment on the style of a President. But what I want to [reiterate is that, we have] values are [common and] being shared with the people of the Philippines.”
“So we just explain and expose our position, but sometimes we can convince some stakeholders in the Executive department [and] in Congress. It is the way we want to discuss once again the global relations among France, Europe and the Philippines. On some sectors, we might disagree; but as friends, we have to discuss,” he pointed out.
Asked what values France is referring to, Mathou quipped, “The basic values of human rights; the respect of life…your country also believes in those values, so we share the same.”
Image credits: Photos by the French Embassy in Manila