2023-10-08 16:54:42
Disagreed: Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD, left) and French President Emmanuel Macron Image: AFP
Trade, armaments, space travel: the German-French engine is sputtering like it hasn’t for a long time. One topic in particular has become the scene of industrial political interest battles. There’s a lot at stake here.
One didn’t have to wait long for malicious comments in Paris when Russia’s attack on Ukraine suddenly fundamentally called the German economic model into question. “Bravo, Ms. Merkel!” causted the conservative “Figaro” with a view to the failed Eastern policy and the coal-fired power plants that Berlin was forced to revive. For decades, Germany’s prosperity was based on outsourcing defense to the Americans, purchasing cheap energy from Russia and exporting to China. Now these three pillars have collapsed, said Bernhard Spitz from the employers’ association MEDEF, summing up a widespread sentiment.
You have to know that in France people pay much more attention to how their neighbors on the other side of the Rhine are doing economically than the other way around. Comparisons are often made. Especially when the French are ahead, as they have been for four years in the EY barometer on the location preferences of foreign investors in Europe. When “Spiegel” recently published the appreciative headline “France – the better Germany” in view of the better economic situation and President Emmanuel Macron’s drive for reform, it caused a huge media response.
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