Berlin’s alliance with Paris starts to creak with EU in a fix
Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz were smiling as they posed for photos before a long dinner this week in Berlin, but there was a chill in the air.
Warm platitudes and hopeful words of future defense and energy collaboration by the French president and German chancellor belied the tensions that bubbled up during the meal they were about to have, people familiar with the matter in both their countries said.
The two nations are at loggerheads on key policy areas as war rages on Europe’s frontiers, with a rift over how European Union members can protect their economies in the midst of an energy crisis and a €100 billion (S141 billion) defense project at risk. Nuclear energy is another sticking point.
Palpable frustrations during Monday’s dinner, arranged to celebrate German reunification, point to fresh trouble in the continent’s most pivotal bilateral relationship.
Since the bloc’s inception, its path and momentum has been determined by a unity of purpose when both Germany and France act together. Whenever that’s lacking, the European Union gets stuck. Macron and Scholz will meet again on Thursday at an EU summit in Prague.
Beyond differences on policy, there’s growing sense on Macron’s side that Scholz and his team aren’t treating France like a priority.
One official cited as an example the German chancellor canceling a long-arranged call with Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne on Sept 29 because he got Covid-19, only to join a press conference by video later that same day to present a €200 billion borrowing plan aimed at cushioning the blow of the energy crisis for German companies and households.
A German government spokesman said that Scholz and Borne’s chat had to be postponed due to the chancellor’s Covid-19 infection and his quarantine. He declined to comment on any plans for Scholz and Borne to speak remotely instead.
Over the years, France and Germany have bickered over EU posts, the Eurozone budget and a free trade agreement with the US. Long-standing differences over nuclear power and ways of improving EU energy infrastructure became another point of contention after Russia sent tanks to Ukraine.
Progress is slow on the Future Combat Air System, known as FCAS. The Franco-German-Spanish
project includes a jet fighter meant to replace France’s Rafale and Germany’s Typhoons jets in 2040.
Despite reassuring public comments from the French and German defense ministers, who agree it’s now up to the industry to push the flagship project forward, Germany and France are considering going at it alone, people familiar with the matter said.
Should the project unravel, French jet company Dassault Aviation SA would develop a fighter on its own, while Germany would likely rely on US imports, they said.
French and German ministers, including those in charge of defense, will get an opportunity to try to iron out their difference at a meeting on Oct 26 in Fontainebleau, near Paris.
“We want things that fly, that drive and that are available on the market, not European development projects that don’t work out,” Bundeswehr’s General Inspector, Eberhard Zorn, told a meeting of the German Society for Foreign Policy last month.