France rallies EU as trust in US, UK and Australia wanes

BRUSSELS (AP) — France’s European Union partners agreed Tuesday to put the country's festering dispute over a major Indo-Pacific defense deal between the U.S., Australia and Britain at the top of bloc’s political agenda, including at an EU summit next month.

The Indo-Pacific security pact known as AUKUS will see Australia cancel a multibillion-dollar contract to buy diesel-electric French submarines and acquire U.S. nuclear-powered vessels instead. The French government is suggesting it was betrayed by the deal.

“It’s definitely something that raised interest and will occupy us in the months to come,” Gasper Dovzan, Slovenia’s foreign affairs chief, told reporters after chairing a meeting of the bloc's European affairs ministers in Brussels.

EU leaders are set to meet in Slovenia on Oct. 6 and again in Brussels on Oct. 21-22.

European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic said the chaotic U.S. troop pullout from Afghanistan last month and the surprise Australian security deal involving the United States are signs that “we need to focus more on the strategic autonomy” of the 27-nation EU.

Earlier, French European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune told reporters that he would urge other EU nations to consider delaying the bloc's trade pact negotiations with Australia, which have been underway since 2018.

No comment was made about that possibility after the meeting, but a discussion scheduled for Wednesday among EU envoys on an EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council has now been taken off the agenda. The TTC – a forum for coordinating on trade, economic and technology issues – was launched when Biden visited Brussels in June. The council is holding its first meeting in Pittsburgh on Sept. 29.

The Europeans see the previously unannounced security deal as the second time...