There seems to be nothing wrong with the relationship between France and Germany. But the ‘hereditary enmity’ may have evaporated, national prejudices are persistent, according to Maarten Doorman.
The relationship between France and Germany has all the characteristics of a friendship. One need only think of the hand-in-hand of President François Mitterrand and Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Verdun in 1984, or the embrace between Scholz and Macron recently in January when Scholz visited Paris. It’s easy to imagine Angela Merkel with Macron at the signing of the Treaty of Aachen in 2019 when the 1963 Elysée Treaty was “updated and expanded.”
However, the ‘Franco-German engine’ is said to be faltering because Scholz went ‘alone’ to China, they don’t think alike regarding the gas price cap and think something different regarding defense spending. Those seem like normal differences of opinion that don’t get to the heart of the friendship.
persistent stereotypes
The essence is that the ‘hereditary enmity’ between Germany and France has long been in the past, and certainly since the Elysée Treaty. That unmind,…