We had been on autopilot for too long, but by dint of putting dust under the rug, we hadn’t realized that this routine was no longer suited to what we were going through. » It’s like being in a marriage counselor and, for three months, it is true that French and German leaders share this point of view of one of the actors in the relationship between Paris and Berlin. Is it the crisis of the sixties – the age of the cooperation treaty signed on January 22, 1963 at the Élysée between Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer? Is it Emmanuel and Olaf who still haven’t found their marks? Is it the new coalition in place in Berlin that complicates, slows down and paralyzes everything? It’s obviously a bit of all of that. This Sunday morning at the Sorbonne and afternoon at the Élysée, the protagonists of the Franco-German saga will have to live up to the pact to which Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz are committed in the tribune which they both sign. and which we publish jointly with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
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Stab
When, on October 20, the Elysée and the German chancellery decided together to cancel the Franco-German Council of Ministers which was to be held on October 26 in Fontainebleau, many felt relieved. “The Council of the 26th frankly presented itself as laborious, with few results and announcements, and that would only have widened the gap which separated us”, confess our source. The gap ? It is true that beyond the complicated subjects which have poisoned the relationship since the beginning of the war in Ukraine – energy, the industrial response to American protectionism, the European defense industry… –, one file in particular has been experienced as a stab in the back in Paris.
In his speech in Prague on 29 August, Chancellor Scholz, whom many Europeans criticized for his lack of vision and leadership, announced that his country was going to act in terms of European security by proposing a new security tool called European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI). It is in fact a vast anti-missile system on which Germany is working, which ended up uniting 14 NATO countries on its side and which would benefit from Israel’s expertise in the matter. Bloodshed in Paris, which was not in the loop and to which Berlin did not even offer to participate. “The Germans’ decision on the Sky Shield project has highlighted an additional reason to have a real strategic discussion with them, they say at the Elysée. We did not have the same analysis on the maturity of this project. »
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That Germany takes a decision of this type, alone, on a subject which affects our deterrence, that is what hurt in high places
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The language is diplomatic but the episode was very badly experienced. “Sky Shield has been a real irritant and the rest, a source at the heart of the bilateral relationship tells us. That Germany takes a decision of this type, alone, on a subject that affects our deterrence within the framework of NATO and Europe, that is what hurt people in high places. » Even in Berlin, the case has raised teeth. “Sky Shield is the perfect example of what not to do when seeking leadership”admits a German military adviser even though he is convinced that “the Franco-German couple cannot do European defense alone”. On October 13, Germany nevertheless brought together its 14 partners at the headquarters of the Atlantic Alliance for a signing ceremony for the Sky Shield project. This week, on both sides of the Rhine, it was hinted that nothing was final, with even the idea put forward by the chancellery that it was possible “to integrate France” in the collective system.
Put everything back together
On October 26, instead of the Franco-German summit which was to take place in France, Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz met at the Élysée. They agreed that the postponement of the Council should make it possible to put everything back on track. On the occasion of this lunch, which also brought together their main advisers on diplomatic and European affairs, a certain number of subjects were identified as priorities. It is up to the working groups that will be appointed to burst the abscesses and to propose compromises on each of the hot issues.
On the defense industry, the pressure ends up bearing fruit. An agreement was reached at the beginning of December to start a new phase in the design of the Scaf, the future European combat aircraft. On energy, another working group is specifically responsible for the hydrogen dossier. The Germans do not want to hear about a green hydrogen which would be produced by nuclear energy but only by renewable energies. Here too, things are gradually unblocking. Sunday in the courtyard of the Élysée, the largest electrolyser in Europe will be exhibited: it is Franco-German.
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We now have a Franco-German engine running at full speed
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It must be said that within the German coalition the Greens feel politically closer to the European philosophy of Emmanuel Macron. Even if the nuclear question remains very ideological, France has, with the head of diplomacy Annalena Baerbock, the ability to listen. On November 7, here she is interviewed in Berlin, with the Secretary of State for European Affairs, Laurence Boone, by a Franco-German delegation of parliamentarians. Pressed by her agenda, she canceled her next meetings to continue answering questions from elected officials. “We need trust but also frank discussions between friends, she told them. You can sometimes curse your partner for not closing the tube of toothpaste. But the value of the relationship is such that we have overcome these small differences because the deep bond remains the most important. » And to admit: “The Council of October 26 was postponed because we were discussing essential identity issues that we had not discussed between us until now. »
Since October 26, this informal conversation on difficult subjects has been relaunched. “The truth is that we now have a Franco-German engine running at full speed”entrusts us the ambassador of France in Berlin, François Delattre. “We discuss, we even fight, but we are no longer like a couple who pretend”, adds a French source familiar with these debates. Did the discussion become easy? No. It remains complicated, but there is more willingness to ease things. “When you ask a question in Berlin, you get three different answers and that doesn’t help”, deciphers a French source involved in the bilateral relationship. Allusion to the three coalition partners, social democrats, liberals and ecologists. “They sometimes ask us to arbitrate between them for them”adds our interlocutor. “The binder in the Franco-German relationship came rather from the right, from the CDU, comments Charles Sitzenstuhl, former adviser to the German-speaking Bruno Le Maire, who therefore frequented Scholz when he was in Finance. On the SPD side, there is nothing, we lack interlocutors. »
There remains the relationship of the “couple” at the top. Emmanuel and Olaf have made efforts but they haven’t known each other for so long. “Between each president and each chancellor, it has not been mad love from day one”, argues a French source. A lucidity that seems to circumvent the very idea of a couple. Too romantic, say the Germans. Not functional enough, recognize the French. “We have common interests and we must move forward pragmatically”they say at the Élysée, as if to also age this somewhat tacky adage that “France does not like Germany but respects it, whereas Germany likes France but does not respect it”.
