It is a meeting between the first two powers of the European Union which will make it possible to know their real degree of agreement. Emmanuel Macron receives Olaf Scholz this Sunday in Paris to display a certain unity found, on the occasion of the solemn 60th anniversary of the reconciliation treaty between Germany and France.
After a ceremony at the Sorbonne at 11 a.m., the President and the Chancellor will meet at midday at the Elysée Palace for a Franco-German Council of Ministers. In October, this annual meeting had to be postponed due to disagreements on a series of key subjects, from energy to defence.
A symbolic date for a reunion
Above all, the date of the reunion is highly symbolic: sixty years to the day after the signing of the Elysée Treaty by Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer, which “marked the end of decades, if not centuries, of fierce rivalries and bloody wars”, write the two leaders in a column published by the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Sunday newspaper.
While the war has returned to the continent for eleven months, they affirm their desire that “Europe becomes even more sovereign”, by investing more in defense and by adopting “a strategy to strengthen the competitiveness European industry. France warns against a “deindustrialisation” if the EU does not respond in a muscular way, with substantial funding, to the massive American plan of subsidies for renewable energies, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
The two neighbors must also try to agree on European reforms to stem the rise in energy prices and put forward joint projects in terms of innovation.
In terms of defence, while the Future Air Combat System (FAS) has made progress recently, missile defense remains a stumbling block: Berlin is promoting a shield project including an Israeli component to which 14 European countries want to join, while that Paris is working on its own system, with Italy, in the name of Europe’s “strategic autonomy”.
The word “couple” less used
There are therefore many files on the table to relaunch the Franco-German engine. At the Elysée as at the chancellery, however, we refuse to dramatize the crisis within the tandem. A French diplomatic source thus notes that the government now refrains from speaking of a Franco-German “couple”, a term in a register that is too emotional. “It’s not a romantic love but a real political responsibility,” says a German diplomatic source.
It is therefore with realism that the two allies intend to approach this new phase, even if a scent of incomprehension floats between them since Olaf Scholz succeeded Angela Merkel at the end of 2021, each annoyed by the initiatives taken by the other. without prior consultation.