For his effort in a foreign language, Emmanuel Macron received an encouraging note from the German media. On January 22, while visiting Berlin, the French president uttered a few words in the language of Goethe in front of the Bundestag, which sounded like a signal to the press across the Rhine: Macron would finally take the Franco-German relationship seriously! “Hurry up, underlines the South German Zeitung. With Putin in the East and perhaps soon Trump in the West, Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz must urgently reflect on their common interests and act accordingly!”
Like the German media, the S.Z. tells how “the storm is brewing” around and inside the European Union at the start of the year. Germany is watching with fear the rise of the far right in the polls, with the AfD (Alternative for Germany) reaching 36% in some regions, while Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is well ahead in the race for the European elections in June. “During crises, the European Union has always relied on the Franco-German duo, maintains the Munich newspaper. In the storm that is brewing, this will still be the case, but it will not be enough: the triangle of Weimar – the alliance between Germany, France and Poland – was thought to be dead in recent years due to the national-conservative power in Warsaw. Now it must be reborn, with a new Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk , who knows how to fight against the enemies of democracy and will be a strong ally for Macron and Scholz.”
There Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung enjoined nevertheless the Franco-German couple to do their part: “if the stories of blatant jealousy between Macron and Scholz are legion, Paris and Berlin know that their current path leads them to a dead end.” The Frankfurt daily assures that the priority should be “the economic renaissance of our continent, which will require courage on the part of Germany and France to initiate changes”. There too, there is urgency.