Recent tensions between Paris and Berlin have led some to question the partnership’s purpose and relevance. But a track record of overcoming differences suggests relations can be revived.
Last week’s decision
by the governments of Germany and France to postpone their joint
biannual Cabinet meeting sent waves of comments about the future of the
bilateral partnership.
Some media in both countries even went as
far as predicting the possible demise of French-German cooperation. Yet,
at the same time, they largely ignored that President Emmanuel Macron
and Chancellor Olaf Scholz will still meet this Wednesday, over a working lunch aimed precisely at dispelling misunderstandings between the two parties.
In the midst of the confusion and the
perplexity that have followed the postponement of the Cabinet meeting,
it would be futile to deny problems in today’s relations between Germany
and France. Too many grievances have been aired recently between the
two capitals to pretend that all is fine. But are we really witnessing
the chronicle of a death foretold or is it more a partnership in need of
profound revision?
For many observers, the piling up in the
last months of diverging views between the two nations in so many
areas—defense projects, the gas price ceiling, the sub-Mediterranean pipeline,
state subsidies to enterprises, Chinese investments in Europe—has not
only brought the cooperation between Berlin and Paris to a standstill,
as illustrated by the postponed Cabinet meeting; it has also epitomized
the vulnerability of a partnership that critics say has lost its
efficiency and perhaps its purpose.
According to these same commentators, the
belief in necessary and useful French-German cooperation should be
questioned when a new balance of power is emerging inside an enlarged EU
and at a time when Germany itself is experiencing major changes in the
very foundations of its economy and foreign policy.
With a fundamentally transformed Europe
comes the perception of a Franco-German partnership that is structurally
flawed and increasingly outdated.
Naturally, official voices on both sides
of the Rhine are contesting this interpretation. And some well-versed
commentators on French-German politics are quick to underline that
relations between Paris and Berlin have never been a smooth affair....
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