President Joe Biden did his best to rekindle the bromance with Emmanuel Macron on Friday but the French president offered a decidedly cool response as he suggest the U.S. would have to do more to repair wounded relations.
'We are building the trust again,' he told French reporters after the meeting, according to the Associated Press.
'Trust is like love, declarations are good, but proof is better.
In public they had smiled, wrapped their arms around each other and showed the world things were on the mend after France's fury at the AUKUS pact and losing a submarine deal.
But Macron's rather Gallic response - sounding for all the world like a jilted French lover wondering if he can ever trust again - may mean Biden will have to deliver actions and not just warm words.
And at one point in their meeting, Macron looked down stiffly at Biden as the U.S. president reached across to touch his arm in a show of bonhomie.
After their meeting at the French embassy in Rome, Biden admitted that Washington had handled things in a 'clumsy' way.
'I want to be clear: France is an extremely valuable partner,' Biden said.
He shrugged off a question about whether he needed to apologize to Macron, saying they 'already talked' but he did offer concessions to his French counterpart.
President Emanuel Macron said: 'Trust is like love, declarations are good, but proof is better,' after meeting with President Joe Biden in Rome
'I was under the impression that France had been informed long before that the deal was not coming through,' he says of thwarted submarine deal that caused so much French fury that Paris recalled its ambassadors to the United States and Australia.
'I think what happened was - to use an English phrase - what we did was clumsy, not done with a lot of grace. I was under the impression that certain things had happened that hadn't happened,' Biden conceded.
'I honest to God did not know you had not been [informed],' he told Macron.
A senior administration official later characterized the U.S. French relationship as 'moving forward'
'I don’t worry at all about instability or drift in the us-France relationship,' said the official.
The two also issued a lengthy joint statement outlining areas of cooperation such as the Indo-Pacific and technical assistance.
Macron said they were on the path to repairing Franco-American relations.
'This is very much the beginning of a process of trust, of confidence which we're building together,' he said.
'We clarified together what we had to clarify' Macron said. 'Now what's important is to be sure that such a situation will not be possible for our future.'
'This is an extremely important clarification,' he added. 'What really matters now is what we will do together in the coming weeks, the coming months, the coming years.'
Biden and Macron shook hands and appeared to be on the path of repairing U.S.-Franco relations
President Biden went to meet with President Macron at the French Embassy
The two men waved for the cameras, smiled, wrapped their arms around each other and grasped hands
French President Emmanuel Macron (R) welcomes US President Joe Biden (L) before their meeting at the French Embassy to the Vatican
Biden and Macron walk into their meeting with their arms around each other
The kumbaya meeting with Macron was part of Biden's make-up campaign to the French.
The two leaders met at the Villa Bonaparte, the French embassy to the Vatican situated in the heart of Rome. Their sit down comes ahead of their attendance at the G20 summit this weekend.
The Villa was originally the home of Napoleon Bonaparte's
