At first glance, there seemed to be nothing wrong, Wednesday afternoon in the courtyard of the Élysée. There, French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed German Chancellor Olaf Scholz with a long handshake and a smile for a working lunch. But, contrary to what Scholz’s team had announced and contrary to what is usual in bilateral meetings of this kind, the Élysée refused to hold a joint press conference.
This one diplomatic stab is yet another sign that relations between Paris and Berlin have been disrupted. Initially, a meeting including the most important French and German ministers was to take place in Paris on Wednesday. That was suddenly canceled last week, officially because a number of German ministers would be on holiday, according to diplomats because of a number of too big differences of opinion between Scholz and Macron.
Within Europe, Germany is sailing too lonely a course, according to criticism from France. Macron blames Scholz that Germany (like the Netherlands and Sweden, among others) is opposing an EU-wide gas price ceiling. The German government says it fears that a gas price ceiling will cause suppliers to move to other continents. Germany, which mainly runs on gas, would also be relatively expensive with such a price ceiling, while nuclear energy country France would benefit from it.
The French president also believes that Scholz is not showing solidarity because the Chancellor, without informing his European partners, set up a domestic aid package of 200 billion euros for citizens and businesses, on top of previous aid packages of 95 billion. Last week, after the EU summit, Macron warned that Germany should not isolate itself too much.
‘Arrogant’
The French president is not the only head of government to express such concerns. Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas told the German channel ZDF last week that she hopes that “Germany understands that we are 27 Member States and if everyone thinks only of themselves, the community as a whole will be the loser”. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, routinely critical of Germany, previously called the neighboring country “arrogant” and said of Scholz’s multi-billion dollar package that it only serves “to help its own industry”. After announcing the German package, then Prime Minister of Italy Mario Draghi underlined that “no Member State can do this alone”, not even “those who seem less financially vulnerable”.
The criticism is extra strong because Germany has become particularly dependent on Russian gas, and now, with deep pockets, is trying to limit the damage for itself as much as possible. The aid would give German companies a competitive advantage.
More difficult files are at play between France and Germany. The countries disagree about the role that nuclear energy should play in the energy crisis. While nuclear power is a crucial part of France’s energy mix and philosophy, the German government has decided that the last three German nuclear power plants will close for good by April 2023. Last week, France, in agreement with Portugal and Spain, closed a pipeline for gas from LNG terminals in the Iberian Peninsula, which would run through the Pyrenees and from which Germany hoped to benefit.
And there are also disagreements in the field of defense. Berlin decided in the spring to purchase 35 American-made fighter planes, F-35s. Macron insists on European sovereignty and believes that defense spending should remain on the continent. The plan of France, Germany and Spain to develop new combat aircraft themselves, came to a dead end.
Deeper fear
But according to analysts, there is also a deeper fear in France, namely that Germany is beginning to look more east and move away from the historically important Franco-German axis. Historian Jacques-Pierre Gougeon wrote this week in Le Monde that because the EU expands eastwards, ‘the center of Europe’ moves eastwards and Germany comes to lie in the middle. France remains on the west side, after Brexit also without the UK, and fears it will lose meaning as a result.
Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Germany, and also Olaf Scholz, has been more attentive to the interests of its neighbors on the eastern side. It was no coincidence that Scholz discussed his vision of Europe at a lecture in August at the University of Prague. But Scholz has yet to find his role in Europe. Sometimes he seems to assume that he has inherited the authority of his predecessor Angela Merkel and can skip diplomatic finer points. „Scholz is like an elephant in the European china shop”, judged the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Other experts say that Macron dramatizes the disagreements to get Germany moving. This approach is not entirely hopeless: despite his earlier resistance, Scholz agreed last Thursday to continue working on a possible price ceiling for the gas market.
After the three-hour meeting in the presence of officials and a private conversation, Scholz wrote on Twitter that the conversation in Paris had been “good and important.” According to German media, plans have been made for the European fighter plane. Macron remains silent about the meeting for the time being – the president regretted on Twitter on Wednesday only the death of painter Pierre Soulages.