2023-07-01 16:30:03
While the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, has just cancelled, due to the riots in France, his state visit to Germany, scheduled for July 2 to 4, it is useful to consider the situation of relations between the two countries. Charles de Gaulle’s triumphant state visit to Germany from September 4 to 9, 1962, about which his adviser, the academic Pierre Maillard, recounts in his book De Gaulle and Germany. The unfinished dream (Lead, 1990), how carefully it was prepared. She carried the idea that the “Franco-German rapprochement should include an in-depth rapprochement of minds, a common and reciprocal perception of the problems of life” and was an essential step in the gestation of what became the Elysée Treaty of January 22, 1963.
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Charles de Gaulle’s desire to harangue the population in German and to address the workers as well as the officers and young people showed that he wanted to “feel” Germany in order to make it “the” partner of the France. This visit was a political success, which the United States hastened to depreciate, John Kennedy’s visit to West Berlin on June 26, 1963, having even been conceived as a counterweight.
Jacques Chirac’s state visit, on June 26 and 27, 2000, also had a certain impact, because it was a visit to the new Germany, reunified, resettled in its capital, with an important speech on Europe, meetings with intellectuals, business leaders and students. But the immediate aftermath was less fruitful, since the European summit in Nice in December 2000 became one of the meetings during which France and Germany clashed most ardently. Part of French diplomacy, faithful to old reflexes, was convinced that Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was not going to use demographic superiority. Nothing came of it and the summit lasted three days. These two examples show how a state visit can have different outlets.
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This observation seems all the more timely today that the Franco-German relationship is going through a difficult phase. Rarely have so many subjects been a source of conflict between the two countries. This disunity contributes to fragmenting the European Union (EU), as this Franco-German entity constitutes a “critical mass”: 48% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the euro zone, 32% of the population and 31% of the budget of the EU.
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