From where I sit here in America, France’s President Emmanuel Macron has fashioned himself as some kind of bridge between a lot of different warring factions. He’s particularly close to President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden. He’s very close to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Macron also maintains contact with Vladimir Putin – to the point where Macron is one of the few European leaders who regularly speaks to Putin. Macron has made France an important player in the EU. I know French people have issues with Macron’s domestic policies, but on a diplomatic level, I tend to think Macron is doing a good job. Of course, Macron’s diplomacy comes with a price tag. Like the €475,000 price tag for the state dinner he hosted at Versailles for King Charles and Queen Camilla last year.

A decadent dinner costing nearly €475,000 for the U.K.’s King Charles III helped push France’s Élysée Palace — the office of President Emmanuel Macron —to a record high deficit last year. France’s love for grand gestures and opulent dining are fully in evidence in the pages of a damning yearly audit of the Élysée’s budget, released on Monday by the Cour des Comptes, France’s top audit court.

The Élysée’s spending, which includes costs related to the president’s diplomatic and presidential duties as well as administration, personnel, security and estate management, reached a whopping €125 million, plunging the books €8.3 million into the red. Among the biggest deficit drivers were two luxurious state dinners, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and King Charles III. Macron hosted the British head of state in September last year at Versailles, historical home of the French monarchy, for a star-studded feast with at least 160 invitees including Rolling Stones’ singer Mick Jagger and British actor Hugh Grant.

The dinner, during which guests enjoyed blue lobster and rose macaroons cost the French presidency close to €475,000 — including over €165,000 on catering and over €40,000 on wine (including a bottle of 2004 Château Mouton Rothschild) and other drinks. Third-party caterers and decorators led costs to surge for receptions held outside the Elysée, as was the case with Charles III and Modi, who was welcomed at the Louvre and was shown some of France’s most-visited museum’s masterpieces by Macron himself. Total cost: upwards of €400,000.

France’s audit court nonetheless acknowledged some cost-saving efforts, underlining the Élysée’s thriftiness when hosting “cocktails for less than 100 people,” events during which the Palace’s in-house kitchen staff is usually preferred over external contractors.

The Cour des Comptes also slammed the French presidency’s poor travel-planning skills, pointing to a loss of over €830,000 generated by the cancellation of 12 apparently non-refundable trips. A planned but subsequently cancelled trip to Germany in July 2023 alone led to a loss of nearly €500,000, mostly due to transport and accommodation costs.

[From Politico]

Some administrations just love to entertain. They always said that about the Clintons too – they were always blowing the budget because they loved hosting state dinners and fundraisers and all sorts of White House events. George W. Bush, not so much. The Obamas were a happy medium when it came to entertaining, and the Biden administration… well, they were dealing with a pandemic and variants, so that affected how they entertained. As I read this Politico piece, all I could think was “how French” and “my god, did they really need to spend that much on wine?” They probably did need to spend that much. Camilla was there, after all. That old boozehound was probably pickled for the entire French tour.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.