The Economist - US Edition by The Economist

Author:The Economist
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: The Economist
Published: 2013-05-03T16:00:00+00:00

The view across the Rhine

When Konrad Adenauer, chancellor of West Germany, and Charles de Gaulle, France’s president, met in 1962 in Reims cathedral for a mass of reconciliation, de Gaulle’s chair was taller than Adenauer’s. That was fine with the Germans, who accepted that the French should lead politically even if the Germans led economically. Helmut Kohl, a later chancellor, proudly followed Adenauer’s advice to bow three times to the French tricolour before nodding to Germany’s black, red and gold.

Yet German understanding is being tested as never before. “Publicly, I’m never worried about France; I trust,” says one official wryly, before expounding how trusting is now hard. Others are less coy. On April 30th the economics minister, Philipp Rösler, issued a report that fretted about French industry losing competitiveness and companies moving abroad. Germany’s private sector has dropped all reticence. “France is drifting to the south,” warns an economist at Commerzbank. At a recent business gathering in Berlin, France was treated as a case study in Socialist mismanagement.

The Franco-German tandem has survived many rough patches over the past 30 years (see chart). Mitterrand shocked the Germans with his nationalisation and devaluation spree in 1981, before reversing policy and adopting the franc fort. Gerhard Schröder and Jacques Chirac spent half a year in the late 1990s barely talking. Mrs Merkel had problems with Mr Sarkozy, even though both are from the centre-right; the two fell out badly over his proposed “Mediterranean Union” that at first excluded Germany. Yet in last year’s presidential election, she openly backed him. By doing this, Mrs Merkel bears much of the blame for the current frigidity, says Jürgen Trittin, of Germany’s Green Party: she “confused a strategic friendship between our two countries with an ideological bond to the former president.”

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