The war in Ukraine, migration and the renewable energy transition are expected to be on the agenda when French president Emmanuel Macron visits Mark Rutte in The Hague later on Monday.

The two countries have strengthened their diplomatic ties in recent years, a development formalised in a joint declaration in September 2021. Since then Rutte has led a cabinet delegation to Paris for a working lunch and given a speech to students at Sciences Po university.

Foreign affairs minister Wopke Hoekstra has worked closely with his French counterpart, Catherine Colonna, most recently last Friday when the two ministers signed a trilateral agreement with Romania and visited a French-led Nato force.

Hoekstra told NRC in an interview that relations with France were ‘on a very different level from 10 to 20 years ago’ and said it was partly a response to Brexit.

‘With the departure of the British both countries came to realise that we’re here to stay and we need each other,’ he said.

A first in a long history of strong diplomatic relations with #Romania and #France: trilateral consultations with my colleagues @BogdanAurescu and @MinColonna. We discussed our close foreign and security cooperation and signed a declaration: https://t.co/bPmK84p3Ru 🇳🇱🇫🇷🇷🇴 1/3 pic.twitter.com/izuf0ytLU8

— Wopke Hoekstra (@WBHoekstra) January 27, 2023

The two countries are also closely aligned in policy terms, seeing the free market and the rule of law as cornerstones of European co-operation.

However, France has also pursued closer co-operation with other European partners such as Germany, Italy and Spain, with which it signed a treaty of friendship and co-operation two weeks ago. The joint declaration with the Netherlands is a less binding agreement.

US inflation act

Macron is also anxious to shore up support from other European nations for a counterweight to the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which includes large financial incentives to make American industry more sustainable. The EU countries have convened a special summit meeting on February 9 and 10 to discuss the impact of the law.

France fears that the subsidies will give the US an unfair advantage in the race to switch to green energy, while the European Commission has branded the support package, worth a total of $369 bn (€338 bn), ‘discriminatory’.

But Rutte has argued that Europe should simplify its own rules and not be drawn into a subsidy battle with Washington. EU nations can use tax incentives to counter the IRA measures.

‘Let’s be glad that America is pulling its weight in the area of climate change,’ he said during a visit to Brussels last week to meet his Belgian counterpart, Alexander de Croo.