Source: New Zealand Government
6th Pacific-France Summit
Intervention by New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs, Rt Hon Winston Peters
Nice, France, Tuesday 10 June 2025
Thank you, President Macron, for convening this meeting today, the sixth Pacific-France Summit. We were privileged to have also been at the second Pacific-France Summit, during the Presidency of Jacques Chirac, in Paris in 2006. Many of the issues raised two decades ago have been raised again today.
Our region faces unique threats to its security and stability. Humanitarian and environmental challenges and increasing geostrategic competition are bringing heightened complexity and risk. In this environment, it is important that we come together to share experiences and perspectives, and to find the best way forward as a region.
Working alongside likeminded partners like France is important and we recognise France’s long-standing commitment to the Pacific and the contribution it makes to regional stability. This includes the unique role France plays supporting the economic development and security of French Polynesia, New Caledonia and Wallis and Futuna.
We value working with France on humanitarian assistance and disaster response through the FRANZ mechanism, most recently used after the Vanuatu earthquake. We also welcome France joining New Zealand and Australia in supporting the Pacific Humanitarian Warehouse Programme, an important Pacific priority.
It is important that partners’ engagement with our region advances our region’s priorities, is consistent with established regional practices, and supports Pacific institutions – including the Forum as the preeminent regional body. This is the best way to support regional stability in the Pacific.
Over 60 percent of New Zealand’s development support goes toward Pacific priorities. This includes a pledge of NZ$20 million to the Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF). This initiative is a clear priority for Pacific leaders. We encourage France to support the PRF and our officials would be entirely happy to share our thinking.
We welcome the important steps we, as a Forum, have taken this year to improve how our region engages with Forum Dialogue Partners. We hope these reforms, which will tier Partners according to their support for Pacific priorities, will be in place by the time leaders meet in Honiara, leading to even more productive exchanges with important partners such as France.
As partners engage with our region, it is important that they do so in a manner that is transparent and supportive of good governance. Not all partners take this approach. Some ask Pacific partners not to publish agreements or avoid the Forum Secretariat when organising regional engagements.
As we face external pushes into our region to coerce, cajole and constrain, we must stand together as a region – always remembering that we are strongest when we act collectively to confront security and strategic challenges.
The Forum plays a critical role in helping us to form a cohesive approach, resolve differences, bolster regional development and security, and use our collective voice to hold bigger countries to account.
We welcome France’s efforts to engage with the full Forum and Secretariat. Notwithstanding the longstanding Forum membership agreement that we engage as a complete group, not all partners have followed this model in recent meetings. We encourage all to follow France’s example.
Our ability to come together in our uniquely Pacific way is one of our greatest assets. We welcome France’s engagement with the Forum Secretariat to organise this important meeting today.
Thank you.
