Australia to welcome back French ambassador after submarine row

Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison has welcomed France's decision to return its ambassador to Australia, adding that bilateral relations with France are bigger than the contentious, canceled submarine contract.

Speaking earlier this Thursday, Morrison dismissed suggestions that Australia needed to rebuild its relationship with France after canceling a $90 billion Australian dollar contract last month, which was decribed as a "stab in the back" by French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.

“We already have cooperation. See, the Australia-France relationship is bigger than a contract,” Morrison said.

“France's presence and significance and influence in the Indo-Pacific isn't about a contract. It's about the fact they have an actual presence here, in the Indo-Pacific, that they have a long-standing commitment and work with Australia across a whole range of different issues,” he added.

France recalled its ambassadors from Washington and Canberra after Australia dropped the contract with majority French state-owned Naval Group to build 12 conventional diesel-electric submarines.

AUKUS alliance redefines Franco-Australian relationship

Under an alliance that includes Britain, Australia will instead acquire a fleet of eight nuclear-powered submarines built with U.S. technology.

Le Drian told a parliamentary committee that Ambassador Jean-Pierre Thebault would return to Canberra to help “redefine the terms” of the bilateral relationship and defend French interests in winding up the contract.

France has already returned its ambassador to the United States.

However, it remains unclear how much the termination of the contract signed in 2016 will cost Australia.

Last month, Morrison said Australia had already spent AU$2.4 billion on the project.

France and its European Union partners reacted with hostility toward Australia over its shock decision to ditch the French deal.

France gives Australia the cold shoulder

Morrison maintains French President Emmanuel Macron wouldn't take his calls.

“I look forward to our first meeting again, our first phone call again,” Morrison said. “I acknowledge it's a difficult period, of course it is. There was no way that we could have taken this decision without it ... causing deep disappointment and hurt to France.”

When leaving Australia, an angry Thebault described the canceled contract as an “incredible, clumsy, inadequate, un-Australian situation.”

“This has been a huge mistake, a very, very bad handling of the partnership,” Thebault said.

This week, Australian Trade Minister Dan Tehan was snubbed by French officials while in Paris.

Negotiations on a free trade deal between Australia and the EU that were to take place this month have been postponed until November.

Bernd Lange, chairman of the European Parliament's Committee on International Trade, said questions have been raised about whether Australia can be trusted.