Forty heads of government joined Macron and Starmer on a video link from Paris on 17 April to stand up the "Strait of Hormuz Maritime Freedom of Navigation Initiative". Friedrich Merz and Giorgia Meloni attended in person. The list of what the conference produced is short: no signed framework, no published rules of engagement, a mission characterised as "strictly defensive" and deployable only "when conditions are met", meaning after a ceasefire or end of hostilities. The list of who was not there is shorter still: the United States. Washington will be "briefed on the outcome". Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council did not confirm participation.
No framework was signed, no rules of engagement published, and deployment was deferred to “when conditions are met”, meaning after a ceasefire or end of hostilities. But in international maritime law the first credible multilateral framework usually holds, and subsequent arrangements negotiate against it rather than displace it. The initiative rests on legal ground the European Union laid down when it rejected Trump's Hormuz toll joint venture on UNCLOS transit-passage grounds, and on the flag-state protests France and Japan filed after their vessels appeared on Trump's toll-interdiction list. That is a pre-existing legal spine, not an improvised one.
Starmer's pre-conference line, that "the unconditional and immediate reopening of the strait is a global responsibility", frames the initiative as a post-war reconstruction instrument rather than a live-conflict intervention. The "when conditions are met" trigger binds the 40-nation mission to whatever ceasefire architecture emerges, which in practice locks the European timeline to whoever holds the end-of-war pen. That is Washington. But the text being drafted is European.
Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain did not confirm participation, leaving the six states that border or control access to the strait off the signatory list. A Hormuz initiative without Saudi Arabia, the UAE or Oman on the paper is still an aspirational document. The Paris conference will be judged on whether insurance-industry engagement, the line most likely to unlock the P&I freeze that has paralysed the strait since day one, becomes a working text out of Northwood next week. Paris wrote the preamble. Whether the operational annex lands with a British signature or waits for the GCC to sign on is the near-term question.
