The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has said that his phone calls with Donald Trump and other world leaders are just like sausages: better not explain what’s inside.

During a news conference Macron was asked about a CNN report last Monday saying that a phone call between the French leader and Donald Trump last week had been “terrible”.

Borrowing a famous quote from the 19th-century Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck, Macron summed up his policy of refraining from making off-the-record comments about his conversations with other world leaders.

Macron said:  "As Bismarck used to say, if we explained to people how sausages were made, it’s unlikely they’d keep eating them.  So I like it when people see the finished meal, but I’m not convinced the kitchen commentary helps with delivering the meal or eating it."

 Macron added:  "You can go and ask the people who make comments, but here in Paris we don’t make comments on how it went, or how hot, cold, warm or terrible things are. We just go ahead and do things."

The French president said he would have a “useful” and “frank” exchange with Trump at the next G7 summit in Canada on 7-8 June about both issues on which they agree and those where they disagree. 

According to French media reports, in Macron’s call with Trump last week , Macron told Trump that his decision to slap tariffs on European exports were "both illegal and a mistake".