Macron wraps up trip with Athens stroll

ATHENS,GREECE— Wrapping up a visit to Greece, French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, departed from the official program Friday to stroll down a crowded central Athens shopping street, delighting selfie-thirsty pedestrians but inconveniencing those unfortunate enough to get stuck in the ensuing traffic jams.

Accompanied by plainclothes security guards, the couple posed for pictures, shook hands and chatted to passers-by for more than half an hour on the Ermou pedestrian street, near central Syntagma Square and the Greek parliament. The president then met and spoke to a group of Greek Orthodox priests outside Athens Cathedral.

Greek police, apparently caught by surprise by the unscheduled walk, blocked major streets leading to the city center, leaving motorists and passengers in public transport stranded for about 45 minutes.

Macron’s visit to Greece, four months after his election victory, has focused on the Greek recovery as well as wider issues related to Europe’s future.

Addressing a roundtable of Greek and French business leaders earlier on his second and final day in Greece, Macron urged European firms to step up their investments in Greece to help reduce the cashstrapped country’s growing reliance on non-european countries, notably China.

He said Greece was “forced” to choose non-european investors “because the Europeans were not there.”

French enterprises, Macron said with certainty, would ramp up their investments in Greece, a country that has spent much of the past decade hurtling from one crisis to the next and seen its economy shrink by a quarter and unemployment and poverty levels swell alarmingly.