Jean-Pierre Robin: “Germany victim of the mercantilist model which had made its success”

Within the Franco-German couple, each lived in his own way the consequences of the war in Ukraine. While the French Office for Immigration and Integration (Ofii) figures the number of Ukrainian refugees across the Rhine at 70,000, the German Central Foreigners Register (AZR) has listed some 727,205 since February 24. Ten times more.

Beyond the energy dependence vis-à-vis Russia symbolized by the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline stored in the museum of antiquities, it is in reality its entire economic model that is in the hot seat. With its colossal trade surpluses – another 172 billion euros in 2021 – Germany has become the caricatural example of a “mercantilist” country to use a term, a doctrine and a practice, whose origin is French. France of the XVI^and and XVII^and centuries of course, that of the economist Antoine de Montchrestien and of Colbert, the minister of Louis XIV, thought that the prosperity of nations rested on the possession of…