Macron and Scholz drifting apart as the war in Ukraine tests European resolve

One of the most common misapprehensions about Britain’s membership of the European Union was that the Twenty-Eight, as they were then, were run, in effect, by the Two – France and Germany.

In fact, as recent events have shown, with Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz at feather-dusters drawn, the Big Two operated best as two thirds of a triumvirate, with Britain holding the middle. 

Macron has spent much of the last few weeks, when he has not been busy confronting the limits of his minority administration, lamenting the inadequacies of the German response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the resulting pan-European energy crisis. 

Relations between the two have in the meantime worsened with the decision by Scholz and his government to prioritise German energy needs this winter over those of the EU as a whole. Berlin has drawn up a €200 billion (£215bn) bailout programme that will directly subsidise domestic homes and businesses while paying only lip service to plans agreed by the European Commission to cover all 27 EU member states.

Macron, it is said, feels betrayed. An inter-ministerial meeting that should have taken place in the Palace of Fontainebleau next Wednesday, led by the President and the Chancellor, has apparently been cancelled and may not now take place until as late as the New Year. The plan had been to align the two governments in advance of an EU summit at which Ukraine and energy were the prime topics. But the so-called European Motor (i.e. France and Germany) has been misfiring of late, so much so that it has lost all traction and the only sound to be heard is of air escaping from its tires. 

Macron believes, as does the UK, that Germany has not been pulling its weight on Ukraine. The fact that Britain believes the same to be true of France is neither here nor there. Scholz is deeply sympathetic to the plight of Ukraine but has no wish to become too deeply embroiled in a life or death struggle with Putin’s Russia. For his part, Macron has only recently begun to make good on his repeated pledge to give Volodymyr Zelensky the materiel he desperately needs to repel the invaders and halt their attacks on Ukraine’s cities and infrastructure.  

While the German leader would probably prefer it if the war simply petered out, with his government committed mainly to a rebuilding programme, his French confrere wants his administration to be recognised as a key participant in both the war and any ensuing peace. Why in this event it is only now that France is sending its biggest and most effective artillery to the front is a question many have been asking since the Russian advance was first halted and then reversed, with the help, overwhelmingly, of the US and UK. 

If ever there was an argument for Britain as the most effective catalyst in matters of European defence and security, this is it. The problem is that at the level of intra-EU cooperation, Britain is no longer there. Nato is one thing: Britain, working closely with with Poland and the Baltic states, has done much to galvanize the alliance, backing the Americans and filling as many gaps as it can in game-changing weaponry. But the EU remains a paper tiger when it comes to waging war. Stalin’s jibe about the Pope’s deficiency when it comes to armed conflict could just as easily be levelled at Brussels. 

Knowing this, it was Macron who pressed for closer cooperation between his country and Germany. Little, however, has come of this. Berlin points out that since the late summer it has despatched quantities of surface-to-air missiles, long-range artillery pieces, laser-guided rockets, ammunition and body armour, not to mention two billion euros in hard cash. But it draws the line at appearing to be a co-belligerent in a fight that, with memoires of Operation Barbarossa still impacting German thinking 80 years after the event, could conceivably see it called on to wage war on Russia. 

Adding fuel to the fire in exchanges between the two is the fact that Scholz, while confirming a massive increase in German defence spending over the next decade, seems to have rejected joint armaments projects within Europe in favour of large-scale purchases from the US. And now that he has confirmed his determination to engage in a Germany First campaign on the energy front, a long-drawn out froideur with Paris looks to be unavoidable. 

On the France First front, matters are equally fraught. Macron’s second term as President has been marked above all by the fact that he does not enjoy a majority in the National Assembly. His own party, somewhat optimistically rebranded as Renaissance, may form the largest parliamentry block,  but the combination of the Left, led by the Corbynesque Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and the Far Right, presided over by the ever-hopeful Marine Le Pen, means that ministers have to fight for every scrap of proposed legislation.

This week, which was already marked by nationwide strike action and mass demonstrations, has seen Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire forced to invoke an emergency constitutional provision, known as Article 49.3, that allows the Executive to force through its budget in the event of stalemate in the Assembly.

The resulting budget, once on the statue books, adds just €700 million to the current level of expenditure, which was, of course, already bloated by the cost of the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine. It includes an indexation of income tax bands and VAT to reflect rising inflation and the cost, put at €45 billion, of the cap on household energy bills. 

No amendments were accepted from Mélenchon’s France Insoumise party or from Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, but some modest changes put forward by the Conservative Républicains and the formerly mainstream Parti Socialiste look as if they will be incorporated in the final package.

Thus far, the mayhem in the streets promised for this week by the Far Left and the trade unions have failed to materialise. Support for strikes that have crippled a number of oil refineries is fading and the main impetus for disorder is coming from anarchists and “ultras” bent on crippling the democratic system. 

Emmanuel Macron has his problems, as has Olaf Scholz, both of whom remain tightly focused on the war in Ukraine and the energy shocks that could stretch their economies to breaking point in the months to come. But, yesterday, the big news in France and Germany was not the war or the cost of oil and gas, it was the never-ending omnishambles of the Tory Party in Britain, universally perceived as a warning to Europe of how not to behave.  

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