In Saint-Ingbert, a big town in the Saar, a Christian democratic voting from the cradle. Here, the German conservatives play at home; They made their nest there. So, this Sunday, February 9, the village hall of this city of 36,000 inhabitants is full to crack. On the platform, their champion, Friedrich Merz, the leader of the CDU, in mind in the polls for the elections of February 23. The sixty -something is not a tribune, but he knows how to heat the room when necessary.
“The prohibition of combustion engine, citizens don’t want it!”, He flourished. Thunder of applause. It must be said that the subcontractors of the region are going through an icy winter and that some of them had to reduce the sail. Suddenly, Merz pulls on a rather unexpected thread to galvanize his audience. Daring in a German electoral campaign, but after all, Saint-Ingbert is only about thirty kilometers from the French border. Yes, you have to take a model on France and the economic sovereignty of its disgrace president, pleads the conservative candidate. “There was a time when Germany was the pharmacy of the planet. Biontech is today listed on the stock market in New York. His research activities are relocated to the United Kingdom. It would not have happened with Emmanuel Macron. They would be Combined on the stock market in Paris. And to continue: “We have to do it differently with our neighbors. When Emmanuel Macron kept his proeuropée speeches at the Sorbonne, there was no response from Germany.”
It all started badly between Scholz and Macron
A mea culpa at the vaguely hostile stiffness of the current Chancellor Olaf Scholz towards the French president. It must be said that between the two heads of state, it all started, a succession of incidents. Until the last one, a year ago, when Macron declares that “nothing should be excluded” with regard to the sending of French troops to Ukraine. With Merz, the probable future German Chancellor, the current is better. “They get along very well,” said the Elysée. The two men would have maintained themselves at length last October at Berlin Global Dialogue, a conference bringing together heads of state and great bosses from around the world.
Everything would go for the best, therefore, if, on this side of the Rhine, a small music was not starting to be heard. What if France, after the possible election of Merz, found itself at the foot of the wall? What if this new complicity was only a facade agreement, as the strategic visions and the paths taken by the two countries are orthogonal? “Germany’s political paralysis and that of Olaf Scholz in recent years have been a blocking factor in Europe. Everyone has suffered,” points out Shahin Vallée, a political economy researcher at the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik. But the German awakening aroused by the possible victory of the Conservatives and the implementation of a more liberal economic policy could reveal all the helplessness of France of 2025. Worse, “with the Merz turn, France could pay dearly its own mistakes “, Specifies the specialist in European issues, Jérémie Gallon.
Its mistakes … or rather its budgetary errors. If the Bayrou government can push a great sigh of relief after the adoption of a budget for 2025, the restoration of budgetary accounts remains very hypothetical. When France announces an exceptional surcharge on the corporate corporate tax, the German conservatives offer tax shock therapy with a massive drop in taxes and a reduction in social spending. Admittedly, the need for the CDU to build a coalition project with the SPD socialists – and perhaps with a third party – the day after the ballot should force the Conservatives to review their copy.
But for the first time in years, a fortress is cracking across the Rhine. The sacrosanct brake on debt registered in the Constitution for fifteen years and which limits the public deficit to 0.35 % of GDP could be bypassed. The CDU did not formally inscribe it in its program, but Friedrich Merz said it was open to discussion. An objective defended for years by the socialists and the Greens who have continued to point out Germany’s delay in investment in the infrastructure and the gigantic needs of the German army. “Germany is about to drop the taboo from the brake to debt when France cannot blow up that of the drop in public expenditure,” continues Shahin Vallée.
A German lock jumps
In the market halls of the big banks, a black scenario for Paris is being written. If Berlin was led to borrow more and therefore to issue more obligations on the financial markets, Paris would then have a little more difficulty in placing its own titles. However, French needs are considerable, nearly 300 billion euros just in 2025. “For years, financial investors and major pension funds have been full of French debt because they fail to buy the quantities of German obligations they wish. Clearly, a spacing of the famous Spread, the rate difference between France and Germany. Obviously a very bad news for Paris, which would be forced to finance its debt more expensive.
Above all, the subjects of friction between the two countries will not disappear with a new head to the Chancellery. At the forefront of which the commercial question and that of defense Europe. If the increase in customs duties brandished by Donald Trump affects all European products, Berlin and Paris are not necessarily on the same wavelength regarding the calibration of the European response. “Friedrich Merz is a fervent supporter of free trade,” said Yann Wernert, director of the Jacques-Delors Institute in Berlin. Where Paris could be tempted to play muscles against Washington, Berlin, driven by its large exporting companies, would especially seek to find new outlets, especially in Latin America. The catch is that Emmanuel Macron took the lead of the anti-mercosur sling. And the signing of the free trade treaty with the five Latin American countries last December by the president of the Ursula von der Leyen commission, against the opinion of France, triggered the ire of Paris.
Likewise, if Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz come together when they talk about the need to build a Europe of defense, each imagines it in their sauce. “When Macron talks about it, it is also so that French industry takes advantage of it,” said Shahin Vallée. You just have to see how the SCAF project, the future European fighting aircraft, was drawn. The aircraft manufacturer Dassault pulls the chestnuts from the fire when the Germans especially have the impression of opening their checkbook. “Conversely, Berlin, who needs to rearm himself quickly, is ready to buy American, Korean, or Israeli and emphasizes industrial sovereignty than France, because pressing,” adds Hans Stark, Professor at Sciences Po Paris.
In this new page of the Franco-German relationship, everything is not played, however. Merz may need, in a tormented geopolitical context, an Emmanuel Macron, even if he, soon at the end of the second term, is widely demonetized in Brussels from the European elections. The violent attacks of the American vice -president, JD Vance, against the Europeans, at the Munich conference on February 14, deeply struck the Germans – however close allies of Washington. Faced with an American administration that despises them, the future chancellor can be tempted to play the French card. During a conference in Berlin on January 23, which was assisted by the Express, he also suggested it: “I will take advantage of the last two years of Emmanuel Macron’s mandate to strengthen the sovereignty of Europe. ” It is allowed to believe it.
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