While a Franco-German council of ministers has just been postponed, a symbol of the falling out between the two countries, a look into the past helps to understand why the close relationship between France and Germany is so important. .
It all started after the Second World War, when Robert Schuman and Konrad Adenauer took the first steps towards reconciliation. But the most important gesture came in 1963, when General de Gaulle and Adenauer signed the Elysée Treaty, a cooperation treaty that paved the way for concerted action in international relations. De Gaulle, in his speech just after signing this agreement, underlined “that no man in the world” unaware of its importance.
Subsequently, French presidents and German chancellors all, with varying degrees of success, supported this policy: Helmut Schmidt and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing defended the franc and the Deutsche mark against the dollar; François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl completed the reconciliation with this image of the two men in Verdun in 1984, shaking hands, a symbol of the two countries coming to terms with their dramatic past and hoping for a better future. Kohl and Mitterrand, the two actors of German reunification, promoters of the Schengen and Maastricht agreements which open the way to a common security and monetary area.
In the 90s and until the beginning of the 2000s, Jacques Chirac got on so well with Angela Merkel that the Chancellor, each year, had a small barrel of beer delivered to him. His personal gift to his friend Jacques, who during their first meeting had kissed his hand.
With the successors of the French president, relations were more stormy: with Nicolas Sarkozy she had to settle the financial crisis and the near-bankruptcy of Greece; with François Hollande, she managed tense economic and geopolitical issues. With Emmanuel Macron, finally, whose passions she hated. She accused him of “break the cups” which she then had to pick up.