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CHRONIC. A France deemed elitist and unequal in Berlin, a Germany too Atlanticist according to Paris, which alone wants to believe in the Franco-German couple. Atmosphere!
Gilbert Casasus*
© Olivier Berg/DPA Picture Alliance via AFP
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Ln January 22, 1963, General de Gaulle and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer signed the Treaty on Franco-German Cooperation, better known as the Élysée Treaty. Fifty-six years later, to the day, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel did the same and agreed on a new version of the text, which entered into force under the name of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.
Less ambitious than his elder, this one never aroused the same enthusiasm and the same fervor within a relationship which, at the dawn of his 60e birthday, is looking for its umpteenth second wind. Now in tune with its own differences, more structural than cyclical, the Franco-German couple is wondering about its future.
Crossed by a political crisis, due in part to the arrival at the p…