Friedrich Merz, the leader of the German opposition party, the conservative CDU, has accused Chancellor Olaf Scholz of damaging the country’s relationship with France, which has hit “rock bottom”, he said.
“Our relationship with France has hit rock bottom since you have taken office. That’s the factual description of how we’re treating France at the moment,” Merz told the chancellor in parliament on Thursday (22 June). His speech was a response to Scholz’s government declaration regarding next week’s European summit.
Earlier, the chancellor stressed that Germany’s “friendship with France remains essential”, claiming that he shared with France’s president the goal of a “geopolitical Europe”.
Merz responded that Scholz had failed to coordinate with France and other EU and NATO partners over the content of Germany’s first-ever national security strategy, which was published last week.
The CDU leader also pointed that Scholz’s did not mention France during his 2022 keynote speech on Europe in Prague, when he invited European countries to form a European air “sky shield”, the goal of which is to procure the same air defence systems with an array of European countries to better protect the continent’s air space.
“This is not what collaborating with France looks like,” Merz added.
Fighting in the air
In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Germany set up the European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI) in 2022, which is supposed to boost Europe’s air defence capabilities through the purchase of American, German and Israeli weapons systems. Seventeen countries have so far joined the club.
France has subsequently set up a parallel project to prioritise purchases of domestically-procured products.
France doubles down on efforts to lead European air defence strategy
France convened a meeting of defence ministers and military representatives in Paris on Monday (19 June) to discuss EU air defence, underlining the importance of European procurement.
While Paris has been adamant that the move is not to be interpreted as a challenge to Berlin’s initiative, it has come as the latest in a succession of diplomatic upsets between the two governments since Scholz took office.
Last October, a planned meeting of the French and the German cabinets was pushed to January at short notice. A German government spokesperson justified the delay with the need for “bilateral coordination”, which was interpreted as a sign of irreconcilable disagreement.
In the aftermath of the incident, Merz claimed that “the Franco-German relationship has been severely strained” by Scholz’s government.
Since becoming the leader of the CDU in 2022, Merz has sought to strengthen his profile on foreign and European policy. Following his election he travelled to Paris to meet Valérie Pécresse, then the presidential candidate for Les Républicains, the main French centre-right party.
The special relationship between Germany and France is an important topic in the CDU given the tradition of Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel, two former chancellors with a close connection to France.
[Edited by Benjamin Fox/Nathalie Weatherald/Aurélie Pugnet]
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