PARIS (Reuters) – Strained relations between France and Germany amid the war in Ukraine and energy crisis need a “reset” to forge a stronger alliance between the two biggest EU countries, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Thursday.
Ties between the two countries, traditionally the driving force behind broader EU policy initiatives, have hit a rough spot with their governments postponing a meeting planned for next week until January.
Le Maire, a fluent German speaker with long-running political contacts in Germany, said that relations were currently “difficult”, firstly because the war in Ukraine had prompted Berlin to turn towards Washington while Paris championed “European sovereignty”.
And the halt to gas flows from Russia exposed Germany’s dependence and called its energy model into question while France was making a new push on nuclear energy, Le Maire said.
Lastly, Germany was struggling to get to grips with new more difficult business conditions in China, which had long been an “El Dorado” for German industry, Le Maire said.
“The war in Ukraine, the gas and energy question and the China issue must lead us to a strategic redefinition of relations between France and Germany,” Le Maire told a business conference.
That would “create a new, possibly stronger, alliance by resetting on a certain number of issues”, Le Maire added, speaking a day after a meeting with Germany’s finance and economy ministers.
French officials have expressed frustration with what they say has been a series of unilateral decisions by Germany, including a 200 billion euro energy package unveiled by Berlin without giving advanced warning to Paris.
For its part, France irritated German officials with its opposition to a German and Spanish proposal to build a new gas pipeline across the Pyrenees to replace dwindling Russian supplies, preferring instead to focus energy investment on France’s nuclear sector.
Germany’s decision to procure weapons systems from the United States instead of Europe has also raised eyebrows in France.
(Reporting by Leigh Thomas; Editing by Nick Macfie)
