US President-elect Joe Biden this week unveiled his Cabinet. Those included several members who are francophones, which means they’re fluent in speaking French. These include Anthony Blinken, John Kerry and Michele Flournoy, AFP reported.

The appointment of French speakers to top positions might have cheered Paris but France knows it will take more than mother tongue chats to overcome transatlantic strains, even after the departure of President Donald Trump.

Biden has named former deputy national security advisor Anthony Blinken as the future secretary of state. Blinken spent part of his childhood in France and is fluent in French. 

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said he was “particularly happy” about Blinken’s appointment as he had worked with him while serving as French defence minister, AFP reported.

A French government source described Blinken as “francophone and francophile” and said he and Le Drian used the informal “tu” for “you” when speaking, as per an AFP report.

John Kerry is Biden’s climate envoy. The former secretary of state spends his holidays in Brittany, while Michele Flournoy, in the running for defense secretary, studied in Belgium where she learned French.

The atmosphere of exchanges with this team is likely to be markedly more cheerful than contacts with the Trump administration that culminated in a frosty closed door visit to Paris this month by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

But an extra dose of bonhomie will not make strategic disagreements — that range from the future of NATO to policy towards China — go away.

In an interview with Le Grand Continent, French President Emmanuel Macron said Europe should have “strategic autonomy” and should “not become the vassal of this or that power and no longer have a say”.

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The Trump administration had wanted Europe to match its confrontational approach on China and was unsettled by telecoms giant Huawei eyeing a role in the building of new 5G infrastructure and Europe taking a softer tack towards Beijing.

“It will undoubtedly be less unpleasant, but not fundamentally different”, a French government source told AFP.

“Europe will undoubtedly be better treated but the United States will not put us back in the centre, their concerns will remain centred on Asia,” the source said.

In his interview, Macron also spoke about the need to “prevent the Chinese-American duopoly” and said that the world was at “breaking point in terms of the capitalist system”.