TARBES, France, May 7 (Reuters) - French President

Emmanuel Macron welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping to the

Pyrenees mountains on Tuesday on the second day of a trip during

which Xi showed little sign of being ready to offer major

concessions on trade or foreign policy.

Macron and his wife, Brigitte, who greeted Xi and his wife,

Peng Liyuan, at the Tarbes-Lourdes Pyrenees airport in windy,

cold weather, took them to have lunch in the mountains dear to

Macron as the birthplace of his maternal grandmother.

Macron, Xi and their wives, accompanied by translators,

will eat lamb, cheese and blueberry pie in a traditional

restaurant high up in the mountains, about an hour's drive from

the airport. The two couples were taking separate cars.

Advisers to the French president described the Pyrenees

trip as breaking with protocol for a chance for one-on-one

direct chats with Xi, without scores of aides on either side.

One of Macron's main objectives is to convince Xi to reduce

the trade imbalance between the two regions, with better access

for European firms in China and fewer subsidies for Chinese

exporters.

Macron has a history of trying to establish

outside-of-protocol personal relationships with his

counterparts, even those he strongly disagrees with, in often

not very successful bids to obtain more from them.

The French leader is keen to embrace, hug, wink at or

slap his counterparts on the back - which he did not chance with

Xi, who is not a hugger.

Macron did do so at the time with then U.S President

Donald Trump

and with Russian President Vladimir Putin before the

Ukraine war, and more recently with

Brazilian President

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, much to the pleasure of social

media commentators.

Xi's Pyrenees invite has echoes of Trump joining Macron in

2017 to watch the Bastille Day parade, or Putin's 2019 trip to

the French president's Bregancon fortress summer retreat, in

southeast France.

"Emmanuel Macron attempted this narcissistic diplomacy of 'I

flatter the tyrant' with Vladimir Putin for five years, with the

Bregancon fort ... the camaraderie," Raphael Glucksmann, who

leads the French Socialists' European Parliament ticket, told

RTL radio.

"And all that ended with what, the invasion of Ukraine and

the threats to our democracies," Glucksmann said.

The European Union's 27 members ran a trade deficit of 396

billion euros ($426.25 billion) with China in 2022, according to

European Commission data, compared with a 250.3 billion deficit

a year earlier.

French and Chinese companies concluded some agreements on

Monday ranging from energy, finance and transport on the

sidelines of Xi's visit, but most were agreements to cooperate

or renewed commitments to work together, and there were no

significant deals.

European hopes of an Airbus plane order to coincide with

Xi's visit appear to have been disappointed, with the two sides

agreeing only to expand co-operation.

Industry sources say the two sides have been in negotiations

on a new plane order for months.

China has historically signalled large jet orders timed to

coincide with state visits, but the negotiations between Airbus

and China's CASC buying agency are likely to go down to the wire

and are not guaranteed to result in a deal, sources said.

However, French cognac makers rallied on Tuesday as Xi

presented what Macron described as an "open attitude" towards a

trade dispute between the two countries.

A French diplomatic source said China would not impose taxes

or customs duties on French cognac, pending the investigation.

Xi did not comment on this during his many public statements on

Monday.