Macron and Scholz: Two weakened leaders face a Europe in turmoil (2024)

As Emmanuel Macron prepares to travel to Germany for a state visit from Sunday, May 26, to Tuesday, May 28, the French president and his host, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, will once again be keen to revive a deteriorating France-Germany relationship. Given the challenges facing Europe – the war in Ukraine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, economic stagnation vis-à-vis the United States and China, global warming, etc. – the stakes are high, as the vitality of this relationship is crucial to the dynamics of the continent.

Following the European elections on June 6-9, will Paris and Berlin be able to breathe new life into their relationship? The task is made all the more difficult by the fact that neither France nor Germany is likely to be in a position of strength on the European stage in the coming months. Since Scholz took over the chancellorship in December 2021, he has been only moderately involved in Brussels, and there is little reason for this to change – quite the contrary, in fact. As for Macron, he will have a much harder time imposing French ideas in the three years remaining to him at the Elysée. On both sides of the Rhine, political capital and energy could be in short supply to bring about change in a Europe threatened from all sides.

In recent years, Paris has undoubtedly had a major influence on the life of the European Union (EU). From the European post-pandemic recovery plan to the joint purchase of vaccines and gas, from the adoption of digital regulation and trade defense instruments to the rehabilitation of nuclear power and the outline of an industrial policy, the 27 member states have taken unprecedented initiatives since 2019 that largely echo the "sovereign Europe" dreamed of by Macron when, freshly elected, he delivered his first speech in Sorbonne University in September 2017.

Back in the great amphitheater of the Parisian university on April 25, it seems the president has lost none of his ambition for a Europe that must be "powerful" if it is not to "die." Always eager to shake up his partners, starting with Germany, he proposed a thorough overhaul of the Union's monetary, budgetary, trade and industrial policies.

But this is coming at a bad time, as "France has experienced its best period in terms of influence," admitted a person close to the Elysée, and it will be much harder for it to influence the next legislature, as it has been able to do over the last five years. Sébastien Maillard, special advisor at the Jacques DelorsInstitute think tank, pointed out that "the Sorbonne speech was a bit of a flop; it didn't provoke any debate among its counterparts, it was a non-event."

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