“Thirty Years of Infidelity” describes the French magazine Marianne the relationship between Germany and France. One issue this month was devoted to the question of how Germany has “deterred” France for years.
Marianne is not alone in the fight against Germany. The French frustrations with Germany seem to be growing, measured against the criticism of the French media of their European neighbor.
The conservative magazine Valuers Acteulles called Germany the “tyrant of Europe” last month and accused Berlin of always putting its own interests above those of the entire European Union. Germany was identified as the real driver behind the signing of an agreement between the EU and China in December, which caused unease in Washington and aroused widespread criticism in France.
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It’s all a long way from January 2019, when French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel signed a friendship treaty in Aachen. The two heads of state and government said they would deepen cooperation on foreign policy, defense, development and security.
The location for the signature was deeply symbolic and should send a strong signal. Aachen was the capital of the Frankish empire of Charlemagne, which included the territory of most of the six founding members of the EU. For the commentators, the message was clear: with Britain’s exit from the EU, the treaty was intended to underline that France and Germany were at the center of the European project and its real leaders.
A poll a year later found that Merkel was popular with 62% of the French. Eighty percent of those questioned said they had a “good image” for Germany.
But since that demonstration of unity, the two countries have been increasingly at odds on a number of key issues. Both Merkel and Macron and their officials openly criticize each other and, according to analysts, have largely avoided public Spats. But that did not prevent Macron and the German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer from clashing last year when the French head of state sharply criticized them for arguing: “Europe still needs America”.
Paris and Berlin were at odds over the 2015 migrant crisis, the near-completed Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, and how best to contain Turkey in its dispute with Greece over the territorial status of the waters of the eastern Mediterranean and ownership may of oil and gas reserves below it.
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Last year France, along with other Western powers, sent warships into the Mediterranean to assist Greece in the stalemate with Turkey. Germany held back and asked the newspaper Le Figaro to comment: “Germany is both the captain and a player who scores against their own side when it is in their interests.”
French officials also express frustration in private at their anger, which is focused on or even considering Germany’s reluctance to intervene in the military. “German restraint is less and less accepted and understood,” said the analyst Paul Maurice from the French Institute for International Relations. “There are many reasons, including historical ones, for Germany’s unease about military operations abroad,” he wrote in a recent report.
An appeal from Kramp-Karrenbauer to closer bilateral security cooperation between Germany and France on Tuesday caused irritation in Paris. Kramp-Karrenbauer said France and Germany needed to improve their coordination over the Russian “threat”, the rise of China and “Islamist terrorism” in the Sahel.
“We haven’t got these threats under control,” a French official told VOA. “We are the most active of all European countries in the Sahel and have asked our European partners for more support,” he added. Since 2014, France has had an insurgent operation known as Operation Barkhane, involving a 5,000-strong French force with permanent headquarters in N’Djamena, the capital of Chad.
Some of the French frustration is attributed by analysts to jealousy and an increasing economic divide between Germany and France. In 1980 France’s per capita GDP was 5% below that of Germany; now it’s 13% lower. Marianne blames this in part for the euro, which, it is said, has become a “lever for trade control in the service of Germany”.
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For Macron, the agreement between the EU and China is becoming a domestic political problem. After strong German lobbying, he backed the agreement despite concerns from Italy, Belgium, Spain and Poland.
The French head of state was attacked for this by figures from both left and right of the French political spectrum. He is fighting to sell the deal to the French.
Critics say the deal will give China preferential access to European markets, while Beijing continues to contain the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong and maintain detention centers in Xinjiang Province, where the Chinese communist government has detained more than a million Uyghurs, according to right-wing groups.
Raphaël Glücksmann, a socialist lawmaker in the European Parliament, has criticized the agreement, calling it urgent because Berlin is determined to “please big companies that have moved to China”. Further EU interests should take precedence over “the shareholders of Volkswagen and others,” he tweeted.
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who has seen her polls spike in recent weeks, is also questioning the deal.
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