Chronic. It was the other France-Germany match. Ahead of the clash of the Blues with the Mannschaft in the Euro championship on Tuesday, June 15, another competition, unacknowledged and much more subdued, has been played out in recent days at the G7 and NATO summits: which of the two large countries of the European Union would win the favor of the Biden administration, in a hurry to relaunch Europe-United States cooperation after the Trumpian divorce?
If the well-known saying in football “and in the end it is Germany who wins” was contradicted by the French victory on Tuesday evening, it was however verified in geopolitics. There was no official proclamation, but in the eyes of the participants in this reunion, on the beaches of Cornwall or in the NATO glass building in Brussels, the verdict is clear: this new departure of the transatlantic relationship is done on a German-American axis. US President Joe Biden has played the Merkel card. More than a departure gift to the Chancellor at the end of the race, it is an investment in post-Merkel Germany and a bet on continuity in Berlin.
If Joe Biden truly believed in “Strength of the European Union”, as he said in Carbis Bay, or if he wanted to encourage it, the first transatlantic invitation issued by Washington would have been addressed to the executive duo of the EU – Ursula von der Leyen, President of the Commission, and Charles Michel, President of the European Council. Providing a third armchair would have been easier in the Oval office than in Ankara. Instead, the US president has chosen to invite Angela Merkel, who will be received on July 15 at the White House.
This must have made you turn pale at 10 Downing Street and grit your teeth at the Elysee Palace. We were able to reassure ourselves by observing that after all, Angela Merkel having been Donald Trump’s favorite scapegoat and Barack Obama’s best friend, it was natural that she was entitled to this expression of gratitude: Emmanuel Macron He was the first European invited to the White House by Trump, before their relationship deteriorated. But this is not the only sign of the priority given to Germany by Washington.
Counterparties
The most significant gesture with regard to Berlin was, at the end of May, the lifting of American sanctions against the companies involved in the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which is to transport Russian gas to Germany bypassing Ukraine. . Nord Stream 2 had become a real diplomatic puzzle: considered by the American Congress and by many European partners of Germany as a gift to Vladimir Putin, symbol of the complacency of German economic interests (former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is the president of the Russian subsidiary of Gazprom which controls the pipeline), it was practically finished when the sanctions suspended work. Apart from the unpopularity of the extraterritorial sanctions, preventing the completion of the pipeline so close to the mark made little sense. Angela Merkel knew it and didn’t budge a bit.
You have 47.05% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.