He isolates himself on a landing, surrounded by a group of advisors. Gabriel Attal has just addressed the French community in Berlin, in a lounge of the French embassy, near the Brandenburg Gate. Before joining the chancellery, where Olaf Scholz is waiting for him, he is briefed on the military ceremony. His aide-de-camp shows him a map of the Bundeskanzleramt esplanade, as well as a video detailing this obligatory rite of passage for each foreign head of state or government received in the German capital. Above all, do not make a mistake, like François Hollande, in 2012, who was ostensibly put back on the right path by Angela Merkel, which sparked some ridicule.
“Ready?” »a diplomat asks, in a light tone, at the end of the brief. “Yes, finally, it’s my first! And so if I go to the right instead of to the left, it won’t be too bad either! »replies Attal in a dry, tense tone. Control freak (control freak), the youngest prime minister of the Ve République hates improvisations and missteps. When the chancellor finally welcomes him, at nightfall, Attal slips to him: “I warn you, these are my first military honors…” Scholz laughs: “Everything will be fine, you’ll see. » At the end of the ceremony, the Prime Minister said to his cabinet, relieved: “I was stressed but I did everything well! »
Less than a month after his arrival in Matignon, Gabriel Attal chose Berlin for his first visit abroad, Monday February 5. Unusual speed. His predecessors were in no hurry. Elisabeth Borne came six months after her appointment, Edouard Philippe had waited four months, Manuel Valls and Jean-Marc Ayrault six months. Jean Castex had not made the trip. “It was not always the choice of my predecessors to choose Germany and, when they did, it took a little time”, he emphasized to some 250 guests who came to listen to him at the embassy. A presidential gesture, while in France, the head of state, barely elected, traditionally chooses Berlin as his first international destination, in order to show the price he places on the Franco-German couple.
Succeed in “a Franco-German surge”
This, in recent months, has been put to the test. During his joint press conference with Olaf Scholz, Gabriel Attal did not hide it. “We don’t agree on everything, it’s true”he noted, while France and Germany oppose each other on several issues: energy, defense, aid to Ukraine, free trade treaty between the EU and the Mercosur countries, favored by the Germans, while the French are hostile to it… “My conviction is that what brings us together is much stronger than what separates us”, he immediately added. At the embassy, it was even clearer: “We must achieve a European revival. And this European surge will be a Franco-German surge. »
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