Germany and France suffer from relationship stress. But Berlin’s star is also sinking in other EU countries. Blame it on German going it alone, fundamental differences and a clumsy Federal Chancellor.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the conference for the reconstruction of Ukraine in October in Berlin.
It was October 2021 when Angela Merkel attended her last EU summit praised like there was no tomorrow. It was a “monument,” said Belgian Council President Charles Michel. You can’t imagine a summit without the outgoing German Chancellor, it’s like “Rome without the Vatican or Paris without the Eiffel Tower”. With Merkel, said Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, Europe will be left by a “great person”.
During her 16 years in office, the Chancellor attended 107 European Councils – as the summits are officially called. Because she became the longest-serving head of government in the EU, led Europe’s largest economy and knew how to dominate the Brussels alpha group in her calm way, all eyes were finally on Merkel – and thus indirectly on his successor Olaf Scholz. Would the new chancellor show similar leadership qualities and be just as good at “keeping the club of 27 together”?
German egoism?
A year after Merkel’s departure, it doesn’t look like it at all. Because there is a huge crunch, especially between Emmanuel Macron, the French President, and Scholz. As is well known, nothing in the EU runs smoothly without the Franco-German axis, and so the relationship problems also have direct consequences for Europe. The fact that it came to this at all has to do with the force of the Ukraine war, the different responses to the energy crisis and possibly also with Olaf Scholz’s style.
Anyone who had not yet noticed that there was a crisis between Paris and Berlin knew this at the latest last Thursday, when a long-planned Franco-German ministerial meeting in Fontainebleau was cancelled. Private reasons were only used as an excuse, the cause being major differences of opinion, for example on armaments and energy policy.
The French side was particularly annoyed by Scholz’s boastful announcement of the “double boom”. Behind the term stands a 200 billion euro rescue package, which is intended to protect consumers and companies in Germany from the consequences of high gas and electricity prices.
In France, but also in other Member States, the plan is considered to distort competition. Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki had already accused Germany at the beginning of October of exploiting the crisis to unashamedly give its companies advantages in the internal market. Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin and her Estonian counterpart Kaja Kallas were similarly critical, albeit more diplomatic. Scholz had not informed any of his EU partners, not even Macron, about the “double boom” in advance.
In France, there is a feeling that Germany would be better off joining an EU-wide program to boost and protect all European economies, similar to the €750 billion Corona Recovery Fund. But Berlin has so far rejected this suggestion with thanks. It is also pointed out that Paris itself subsidized energy prices in its own country with 120 billion euros in the summer.
False nuclear policy
At the EU summit in Brussels, tensions between Scholz and Macron became even more apparent. It is neither good for Germany nor for Europe if a member state “isolates” itself, the French President told the press. What was meant was the Chancellor’s resistance to an EU-wide gas price cap. Scholz leads a minority of states opposed to market intervention. Macron, on the other hand, wants the state-set upper limit for the gas price and knows that he agrees with the majority of southern and eastern Europeans.
In the end, there was no big bang in Brussels. They got together, said Scholz, and presented a vague minimal compromise. However, the issues were by no means resolved. A high-ranking EU official revealed to the NZZ that a great deal of frustration had built up, especially among the East Central European summit participants, with Germany, which, due to its wrong energy policy decisions, was largely responsible for the crisis.
What is meant is the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the high dependence on Russian gas, but also the fact that the German government has recently bought the gas market empty, thus driving up prices. Not only in France, but also in Eastern Central Europe, people are also surprised that Berlin is sticking to the final nuclear phase-out in the middle of the biggest energy crisis.
Single-handedly to China
In Poland and the Baltic States there is also mistrust of Scholz and his traffic light coalition because of their hesitant support for Ukraine. Few seem to believe that Germany is capable of the leadership role that many in Europe would like to see played by Germany.
The skeptics are also concerned that Berlin seems to be repeating the same mistakes it made with Russia in its dealings with China: although Brussels has long been discussing how to decouple from China in order to become more strategically independent , Scholz will fly to Beijing with a large business delegation in the coming week.
In Brussels, the Federal Chancellor brushed off critical inquiries about the trip by pointing out that you have “always done it this way” – as if the example of Russia does not show that it can be politically very risky to enter into one-sided economic dependencies.
In fact, Merkel too saw foreign policy primarily through economic lenses. The Chancellor, who on the one hand managed to keep the EU together in many crises, on the other hand planted the seeds for European conflicts with her mercantilism: with her adherence to Nord Stream 2, the nuclear phase-out and the naïve trust in Putin as an economic partner.
These mistakes fall on Scholz’s feet today. But instead of taking countermeasures in close cooperation with the European partners, the chancellor is primarily involved Lip service to a «stronger, more sovereign and more geopolitical European Union» out – he has so far failed to provide evidence that he is serious about it.
The Brussels correspondent Daniel Steinvorth Twitter follow.