For more than 60 years, France and Germany have been official friends – or more than friends. They have been diplomatic ‘besties’, the indispensable ‘couple’ at the heart of the European Union.
In the 1950s, they were the motor that drove the creation of what became the EU. Since the early 1990s, they have conceived or delivered the most ambitious European policies, from the single currency to borderless freedom of movement and – with the help of Thatcherite Britain – the single market.
Yet just when the EU faces unprecedented challenges to its future prosperity and even survival, the Franco-German friendship has cooled. The coming year will present intense difficulties that could deepen this rift or compel Berlin and Paris to work together once again. A second Donald Trump term threatens to uproot the US security guarantee to Europe. The Russia–Ukraine war is approaching a fourth and potentially calamitous year. And Europe could face simultaneous trade wars with China and the US.
French president François Mitterrand (left) and German chancellor Helmut Kohl are credited for overcoming national interests and driving the creation of the EU. Photo: Marcel Mochet/ AFP via Getty Images.
Domestic turmoil
At this critical moment, domestic politics in both France and Germany have disintegrated. The minority government to which President Emmanuel Macron was obliged to surrender power in the summer collapsed on December 4 when it lost a confidence vote on the issue of its proposed budget. Addressing the French nation shortly afterwards, Macron pledged to serve until the end of his presidential term in 2027. New parliamentary elections are possible next summer.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s left–green–liberal coalition has imploded. The liberal Free Democratic Party left government in November after Scholz fired its leader, Christian Lindner, as finance minister. If, as expected, Scholz loses a confidence vote on December 16, federal elections will be held on February 23, months ahead of schedule.
The Franco-German partnership within the EU has been bumpy. Yet, the one-time enemies turned their differences into complementary strengths. Germany was the economic locomotive of Europe; France a global, military and diplomatic power.
Dwindling respect
That mutual respect has now dimmed and other EU countries’ esteem for Europe’s Big Two has also deflated. Poland and the Baltic countries still resent Paris and Berlin playing softball with Vladimir Putin before February 2022, dismissing their warnings about Moscow’s intentions in Ukraine.
‘Having Trump back in the White House could force Berlin and Paris to work together or it could reinforce their differences,’ said Sébastian Maillard, associate fellow of Chatham House’s Europe Programme and special adviser to the Jacques Delors Institute. ‘Macron will feel that he has been vindicated in his appeals for European strategic autonomy. Germany, whoever emerges as the next chancellor, will be very reluctant to abandon its Atlanticism.’
Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union, and favourite to win the February elections, sounded almost Macron-like in a tweet just after Trump’s victory on November 5. He called on the EU to ‘conduct global policies by its own means, assume responsibility for its own security and reinforce its economy’.
This was encouraging for Paris, but French officials doubt Germany still cares about the Franco-German alliance as much as the French political classes do. Constanze Stelzenmüller, director of the Centre on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, says the problem, from the German viewpoint is one of France’s abilities to deliver on its grand ambitions given the electoral reverses suffered by its leadership.
‘Of course the German political classes care about the relationship with France,’ she said. ‘But they look on with extreme puzzlement at what is happening there at present … and especially the great divide between what the Paris monarchy says and does and what the people want.’
The forge of the EU
Does it matter? Yes, it does. Together France and Germany provide 30 per cent of the population and half the GDP of the EU-27. The old Franco-German alliance could not – and should not – dominate the EU-27 in the way that it dominated the EU-9 or EU-12. But profound disagreement between Berlin and Paris on a range of subjects – from trade to energy to defence, to debt – threatens to paralyse the bloc next year at a time of existential crisis.
‘Without France and Germany, there can be no EU,’ said John Kampfner, the British author and expert on German politics. ‘Times have changed. But that central truth remains.’ Mujtaba Rahman, managing director, Europe, for the political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, said: ‘The Franco-German relationship is about more than France and Germany. It is a forge, a laboratory, for what is possible at the EU level. Nothing substantial can happen in Europe unless its two largest economies see eye to eye.’
On many occasions recently, France and Germany have found themselves on opposite sides of EU arguments ranging from the European energy market to trade with China to the idea of vast, new EU-backed loans to invest in the continent’s industrial survival. Germany has been in the minority on some issues, such as EU-backed loans and tariffs on Chinese electric cars; France is in the minority on others, such as the blocked Mercosur free trade treaty with Latin America.
French officials complain that the divided Scholz government has wound itself into a kind of ‘Germany First’ cocoon. German officials retort that Macron and France should put their own house in order before trying to build a European mansion.
The French model of high welfare protection and high taxation, challenged with some success by Macron, is now choked by a budget deficit double the eurozone target of 3 per cent of GDP and €3 trillion in accumulated debt. It was on the budget issue that France’s hard left and far right united to bring down Michel Barnier’s short-lived government.
Speaking just ahead of the December 4 confidence vote, Maillard said: ‘The political crisis triggered by the vote weakens France’s already vulnerable fiscal position, as seen in the widened spread between French and German long-term interest rates on bonds.’
French officials retort that the German model is also in the ditch. Berlin no longer has cheap Russian gas, privileged access to the Chinese market or an open-ended guarantee that the US will subsidize the defence of Europe. All the more reason to heed President Macron’s words about the need for a ‘strategic Europe’, which asserts the economic, military, diplomatic and cultural autonomy of the EU.
Past divergences between Berlin (or Bonn) and Paris were converted into forward leaps in European policy through the close personal relationship between the French and German leaders. A shining example was the support for the creation of the single currency by Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand in the 1990s to counter-balance French anxieties about the reunification of Germany. Maillard said: ‘Relations between Macron and Scholz are non- existent. The two personalities could not be more different: Macron constantly spilling out new ideas, Scholz treading carefully and suspicious of all grand gestures.’
Kampfner said much of the blame should attach to Scholz. ‘With a different German leader, the divergences with Paris might not have become so large,’ he said. ‘But Scholz does not like to lead. He merely referees between the different parts of the coalition. On Europe in recent months, he seems to have adopted a Thatcherite approach of picking unnecessary quarrels in Brussels to win political points at home.’
French officials make the same complaint. ‘Macron sees a stronger Europe as the solution to France’s problems; Germany under Scholz often sees the EU as the problem, not the solution,’ one senior French official said.
Crises ahead
A victory for the Christian Democratic Friedrich Merz in the federal election in February might provide Macron with a more responsive German partner. But Macron’s prestige in Europe is tarnished by the consequences of his ill-fated decision to call a snap election in June. And it remains to be seen whether any government will last any longer than Barnier’s. If not, the calls for Macron to resign are likely to increase. Even if he survives, he will have only two years remaining of his final mandate.