“We are certainly approaching a moment in our Europe where it will be appropriate not to be cowardly,” said Emmanuel Macron on March 5 from Prague, in the Czech Republic. Across the Rhine, where we naturally felt targeted, the sentence was received as an affront… One more. This tackle is only the latest episode in the recent verbal escalation between France and Germany over aid to Ukraine.
This Friday, March 15 in Berlin, the French president and the German chancellor will strive to ease these tensions. The task promises to be delicate. On February 24, this Franco-German quarrel took on rare proportions when the head of state affirmed not to exclude the sending of troops to the country at war following the Paris Conference on support for kyiv .
“Send a positive message to Europe”
The German chancellor then rushed to publicly disavow it, in the name of the EU and NATO. And Paris fumes. Olaf Scholz certainly did not take tweezers, but he had reason to be scalded. Not only had Emmanuel Macron not warned his allies, but he again, without naming it, threw barbs at this Germany which only wanted to provide “sleeping bags and helmets” at the start of the war and which , at first, always answers “never, never”…
In Berlin, we appreciate these taunts very moderately, and even less appreciate being accused of “cowardly”, while Germany is by far the second supplier of arms and economic aid to kyiv, after the United States. On several occasions, Olaf Scholz has also criticized France for its “insufficient” efforts in this area, although he refrained from naming it in public.
“This series of oratorical jousts is symptomatic of deep flaws in the Franco-German relationship, even if, visibly, there is still a desire to work together, and to strengthen ties,” analyzes Jeanette Süß, researcher at the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri).
In Brussels, we expect a lot from Friday’s meeting. “If France and Germany cannot agree on aid to Ukraine, it will be catastrophic,” said a French source in Brussels. Macron and Scholz have never been able to tame each other, but they must send a positive message to the rest of Europe, overcoming their personal difficulties.” The two leaders thus have notoriously incompatible temperaments: the president is voluble, fiery, and wants to be “disruptive”, while the chancellor is taciturn, very measured, not to say austere.
Divergences on the military domain, but not only…
Of course, the crisis that the tandem is going through is not just a matter of characters, it is structural. If the two countries share the objective of supporting Ukraine “as long as it takes”, their vision diverges in the military domain. Emmanuel Macron advocates “European sovereignty”, while Olaf Scholz sees the question solely through the prism of the alliance with the United States.
The tensions go far beyond this subject. In recent months, the two countries have clashed over numerous issues in Brussels, such as energy and debt. The malaise actually dates back to the start of the war in Ukraine, the consequences of which shook the German economic model and led the country to focus on its own interests, even if it meant neglecting the European scene. This period also corresponds to the beginnings of the government coalition led by Olaf Scholz – between the social democrats, the greens and the liberals – whose erratic functioning is another reason for tensions with Paris.
“Sometimes when you ask the Germans a question, you get three different answers. And Scholz is incapable of refereeing,” people grumble in Paris. Last October, the chancellor and the president proclaimed the “moral duty” to “understand each other better” at the end of a seminar in Hamburg between the two governments, already intended to put the bilateral relationship back on track. But for the Franco-German couple, it clearly took more than one therapy session.