After Macron's state go to to Germany, new Franco-German momentum | EUROtoday

Pwidespread in essence, the state go to of a President of the Republic overseas also can have a symbolic cost and, thereby, produce optimistic political results. This is the hope aroused by the wealthy three-day journey that Emmanuel Macron has simply made to Germany, from May 26 to twenty-eight.

This state go to, the primary by a French president since that of Jacques Chirac in 2000, was all of the extra well timed because it got here at a time when the Franco-German relationship goes via a tough interval, marked by a number of disagreements. , whereas Europe is as soon as once more confronted with conflict on the continent. From this viewpoint, it achieved its objective: to breathe new life right into a relationship which desperately wanted it, and which stays essential for the general dynamics of the European Union.

To obtain this, the German facet spared no effort. The Federal President, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, accomplice of the Head of State in this kind of go to and former Minister of Foreign Affairs, introduced the heat that’s typically missing in these exchanges and assuredly deciphered the mode of operation of his French counterpart , whose lurches usually brutalize German habits: “Where we see difficultieshe analyzed, he sees horizons. »

Enthusiastic welcome

The selection of Dresden as a stopover on the presidential journey was notably even handed. It made it potential to position the Franco-German relationship in its historic perspective, in a metropolis which bears witness to each the injuries of the Second World War and the scars of the reunification of 1990, which many East Germans contemplate at the moment at the moment that they haven’t benefited equally. Mr Macron's resolutely pro-European speech in entrance of the Frauenkirche, an 18th century church^e century rebuilt after the conflict, additionally had a heavy symbolic significance on this area the place the German excessive proper is making its most spectacular push.

The enthusiastic welcome reserved for the French president in Dresden by a big and attentive crowd, drawn to town by the Europe Day music pageant, contrasted with each the colder encounters to which Emmanuel Macron is accustomed at dwelling. him and with the unpopularity of Chancellor Olaf Scholz. No one is a prophet in his personal nation: this distinction didn’t escape the German media, a few of which had been shocked that the French disdained such a communicative president, noting that, on each side of the Rhine, leaders anticipated to heavy electoral setbacks on the night of the June 9 vote for the European Parliament.

The extra concrete a part of this go to, which ended Tuesday with a Franco-German council of ministers and a protection council chaired by MM. Scholz and Macron, confirmed the bounds of symbolic demonstrations and grand speeches: no important breakthrough within the Paris-Berlin widespread agenda has been recorded. But, there too, a brand new heat and momentum had been perceptible, in addition to the will to maneuver ahead on tough points.

We should now construct on the inspiration of Dresden: that is what many of the European companions of Berlin and Paris anticipate, conscious that, regardless of the rising weight that the conflict in Ukraine provides to the international locations of the north and east of the EU within the European dynamic, unity between the 2 international locations, an exemplary historic expertise and up to now distinctive, stays very important for any progress in Europe.