When Friedrich Merz becomes German chancellor on 6 May, the relationship between France and Germany looks set to improve. Despite lingering efforts, France’s President Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s outgoing chancellor, Olaf Scholz, never had a good relationship and their governments remained at loggerheads on several key strategic issues. Europe’s Franco–German engine has been running on empty for too long.
The engine also stalled for domestic reasons. Internal divisions in the outgoing three-party coalition often made it difficult for Germany to clarify its position. In France, the lack of any stable majority in parliament weakened the president’s grip. The country changed governments four times in 2024, puzzling its European partners.
But the situation is changing dramatically. Germany is returning to its familiar ‘grand coalition’ (CDU/CSU–SPD) government, and the incoming chancellor has already started acting as such. In France, Macron is repositioning himself amid a tumultuous geopolitical context. The two leaders have already started building a dynamic working relationship.
In Paris, there is a reassuring sense of déjà vu in dealing with a German chancellor described as a Rhenish, Francophile Christian-Democrat, who has European integration in his political DNA and intends to invest in EU affairs. Merz’s personal long-standing commitment to Franco–German relations facilitates common understanding. Most importantly, he shares many key positions with Paris. In Merz, Macron may well have found the close German partner he has lacked since 2017.
Convergence on key policy issues
On Ukraine, France supports sending long-range missiles to help Ukraine. Merz has spoken in favour of giving Taurus missiles to Kyiv, something that Scholz opposed. Both countries now back NATO membership for Ukraine, also something that Scholz had resisted.
On defence, Germany’s new ‘whatever it takes’ stance is welcomed by France. Merz has loosened the country’s public debt brake to invest in defence and infrastructure. While traditionally a staunch transatlanticist, on the evening of the German elections he called for his country to achieve independence from the US. However, the coalition agreement does not use such gaullist language nor does it push for Germany benefitting from French and British nuclear deterrence, as suggested by Merz earlier with regards to NATO’s uncertain future.
On energy, the new chancellor has always considered his country’s withdrawal from nuclear power a strategic error. Although reopening reactors would be unrealistic, his opinion could ease a policy deadlock over EU climate targets for 2040 and the financing of new reactors with fresh European means.
But other strategic areas will require compromise.
On trade, Merz endorses the EU’s deal with Mercosur, which Paris has stubbornly rejected. But Trump’s tariff war and France’s isolation on the Mercosur issue could possibly push Paris to slowly soften its opposition.
On raising European competitiveness, Macron will continue to push for joint borrowing, as recommended by the Draghi report. But Germany’s fiscal unleashing at national level may well mean that it opposes such initiatives at EU level.
Nonetheless, it is expected that both governments will push for a Savings and Investment Union, as set out in the Letta report on the future of the single market, and will try to hold joint positions in the negotiations on the 2028-34 EU budget. Both also want to revise EU competition law to foster European industrial champions against foreign competitors.
But closer ties, shared views and a willingness to compromise are not enough to rev up the Franco–German engine, other factors are needed. One driver is that both leaders are in political hurry. Macron’s mandate ends in two years, while Merz is impatient to show that Germany is back in Europe. The German coalition agreement proposes a weekly ’EU monitoring’ to provide the interministerial coordination needed to clarify Berlin’s position in European meetings.
The EU needs political leadership
Current geopolitical circumstances call for European political leadership – and fast. The acceleration of US disengagement from Europe and increasing Russian hybrid threats bring a sense of urgency. The rest of the EU, not least the European Commission, can ill afford its two key member states to lack impetus at such a watershed moment for the fate of European integration.
Even so, the Franco–German engine can no longer claim to power the whole of the EU. It takes more than two to tango in today’s EU of 27. Increasingly, the duo is becoming a trio with Poland, through the revived Weimar Triangle format.
Merz is planning to make his first official visit to Paris the day after he takes office. But he also plans a similarly symbolic visit to Warsaw on that same day to improve the relationship with Poland – Scholz had a terrible relationship with both Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his predecessor – and to underscore the Weimar format as the bedrock of European coordination. France is also planning to enhance its bilateral relationship with Poland through a treaty to be signed on 9 May. These upcoming high-level visits will help build the narrative of renewed European leadership.
