President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr President, friends. It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the Kremlin.
First of all, I would like to congratulate you on the holiday France celebrated yesterday – I already sent a message, but now I am happy to do it in person – Bastille Day. And of course, on your team reaching the World Cup final. We will be watching the match tonight and I am sure that the game will be intense, exciting and beautiful, and will please millions of fans around the world.
I am certainly glad to have this opportunity to talk about our bilateral relations. In this regard, I would like to note a positive trend in trade and economic sphere: last year’s growth of trade was around 15 percent, while in the first six months of 2018, it is 19 percent.
The large interparliamentary commission is scheduled to meet soon; that is, the usual cooperation mechanisms are gradually being restored. This gives grounds to believe that we will overcome all the difficulties encountered in the previous period, and will embark on the path of positive development of multifaceted ties.
In this regard, I would like to note that your visit as part of the St Petersburg Economic Forum gave a good impetus to the development of our relations.
President of France Emmanuel Macron (retranslated): Thank you, Mr President, for the reception.
I would like to repeat, I am very glad to come here again. Indeed, I made a commitment earlier to come to St Petersburg, from the moment our team makes it to the semi-finals, but today I came here to support my team in the final.
I would like to give credit to your team, which achieved great success, making it so far, and doing it in spite of all the forecasts. They did just great.
I also wanted to congratulate the entire country, the host country of this World Cup, on an excellent organisation of this event, which was followed in all regions of the world, and people from all regions came here. Everything was organised with excellent security; everything was just perfect.
Today's meeting is a good chance to continue our dialogue, the exchange of views we started on May 24 and 25 in St Petersburg. We discussed a series of bilateral issues, as you have already mentioned. We also discussed a number of international and regional issues as we often do, first of all, the situation in Syria. We made certain commitments and implemented a number of measures.
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