It is said that when in 1958 German Chancellor Adenauer made a private visit to Charles de Gaulle at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, he arrived late. The driver of the official Mercedes had stopped by mistake in Colombey-les-Belles, a hundred kilometers away. This did not prevent these two devout Catholics from forming a deep relationship. It has since been forgotten, but this friendship was based on the idea of a Europe of “Christian civilisation”, to use the Chancellor’s own words.
From this new friendship was born on January 22, 1963 the Élysée Treaty, which opened the way to European integration. A treaty in which, at the last minute, Germany will insert a preamble affirming the primacy of NATO. To the great despair of the French president, who wanted to take him away from the American umbrella. It is nevertheless since this time that we speak of the “Franco-German couple”.
Sixty years later, the expression seems dated to say the least, not to say anachronistic. This does not prevent part of the European press from repeating it ad infinitum, as if for at least a good decade this “couple” had not been sleeping apart.
But it happens that wars serve as revealers. The one that is continuing in Ukraine will have brought to light what had been in preparation for a long time. In what is supposed to be the El Dorado of the free market, Germany is announcing point-blank without warning anyone of the 200 billion euro investments. A clearly inflationary project intended to mitigate the effects of rising gas prices on its industry. Totally “addicted” to gas, Germany persists in refusing that Brussels cap prices, as proposed by France, for fear that the markets will turn away from it. So Berlin is accused of favoring its national interests to the detriment of its economic partners.
As if he had already done anything else! When in 2011, shortly after the Fukushima disaster, Angela Merkel chose to get out of nuclear energy, she had not consulted the Élysée either. Yet it shattered any prospect of a European energy policy worthy of the name. Same thing in 2015, when on a whim, she let in more than a million migrants. A decision which, under humanitarian airs, allowed Germany to fill its labor shortage, while France was experiencing structural unemployment and serious immigration problems.
It is exactly the same logic that has just guided the German decision to create an air shield (with Israeli and American equipment) in collaboration with 14 European states that are also members of NATO. But a shield that will be made without the main military power of the continent, France! While all Franco-German defense projects are stagnating, Berlin is turning the iron in the wound by using the 100 billion it will devote to its defense to buy not European, that is to say French, but Americans. And this, even if France was last year the third largest arms exporter in the world, ahead of China. It is at this price and by continuing more than ever to delegate its security to NATO that Germany intends to consolidate the German-American axis and preserve its position as the regional pivot of the United States in Europe.
The sweet (French!) dream of a chimerical “European defence” has therefore come to an end! Never have there been so many points of friction between Germany and France. And for good reason. Germany today faces the collapse of the economic model that was developed under Gerhard Schröder at the turn of the millennium. This model was based not on the European market, which is considered as a simple rent in Berlin, but on the import of Russian gas at low prices and the export of industrial products to China. However, this model is today shaken both by the withdrawal of supplies from Russia and by the rise of tensions with China.
“In the past, the heart of the Christian West beat between the Loire and the Weser”, said Adenauer with a touch of nostalgia. His successors look to the east. Chancellor Scholz made no secret of this in Prague on August 20, declaring that “the center of Europe will move eastwards”. In short, that he will move away from France. This is how Germany protects and expands its hinterlandthis subcontracting zone essential to its economic model and which could soon be part of Ukraine, Montenegro, Kosovo and even Albania.
Basically, the idea of the “Franco-German couple” is the equivalent in Europe of the good old “two nations” thesis in Canada. The first has no more real existence in Berlin than the second had in Ottawa. It took the war in Ukraine to bring it to light. Old Bismarck didn’t have that gazelle modesty. He simply said that “who talks about Europe is lying”. Recent history tends to prove him right.