Macron and Scholz to try to mend differences in Paris lunch meeting

Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz will meet in Paris on Wednesday in a bid to quell rumours that the Franco-German engine is spluttering.

The working lunch between the French President and the German Chancellor is in lieu of a cancelled ministerial assembly, initially scheduled for this week however now postponed to January.

The assembly usually is held yearly however hasn’t taken place in particular person because the COVID-19 pandemic.

Formally, the rationale for the postponement of the assembly is that a number of German ministers are unavailable as a result of faculty holidays.

However difficulties to find frequent grounds on a number of matters together with methods to greatest deal with skyrocketing power costs in addition to defence loom massive.

The 2 leaders are actually not anticipated to carry a joint press convention after their assembly. Berlin initially stated the 2 leaders would face reporters collectively after their assembly just for Paris to refute it later.

Each Macron and Scholz sought to downplay their variations as EU leaders gathered in Brussels final week for a summit to debate methods to curb power costs.

“We do not all the time have the identical positions, which is regular, and we’re at a key second when many issues are being revisited in our Europe on power, defence and the economic system,” Macron advised reporters on Thursday.

“All this requires arduous work. However as I’ve all the time stated to you, I feel that European unity is essential on this interval and that’s what we’re engaged on,” he added.

Scholz’s spokesman, Steffen Hebestreit, in the meantime stated that “there are an entire sequence of various matters which can be at the moment occupying us. I don’t know whether or not there are snags however it’s not but the case that we’ve reached a united stance.”

Vitality, defence and China

On power, each international locations agree with proposals from the European Fee for joint purchases of gasoline and for the creation of a brand new benchmark that might take LNG imports into consideration and may due to this fact lead to lowered costs.

However Germany is towards the proposed roll-out of an EU-wide value cap on gasoline or the extension of the so-called Iberian mannequin — which caps the value of gasoline used for electrical energy technology — to the remainder of the bloc. It argues that the measures, which Paris helps, might respectively result in provide points or a rise in consumption.

The Elysee can be reportedly not happy that Germany didn’t seek the advice of them earlier than unveiling a €200 billion support package deal to ensure its residents and companies can survive this era of excessive power costs on the grounds it might distort competitors throughout the Single Market.

The Chancellery, in the meantime, is smarting from the French resolution to dam the development of a pipeline by its territory that might have seen Germany obtain gasoline after which hydrogen from Spain.

Paris argued that the challenge went towards European transition targets and as a substitute agreed final week with Madrid and Lisbon to construct an underwater pipeline between Barcelona and Marseille that might primarily transport hydrogen.

On defence, a historically sturdy French subject, there are additionally divergences. Russia’s warfare in Ukraine has precipitated a safety rethink in Berlin with a €100 billion plan to shore up its capabilities. It has additionally shepherded the creation of a European Sky Protect Initiative to plug caps within the bloc’s air defence system.

The issue for Paris, which is championing EU sovereignty, is that each initiatives would see Berlin investing closely in US-manufactured weapons techniques, relatively than European equal.

EU sovereignty can be on the coronary heart of their variations in relation to China, which Scholz is scheduled to go to subsequent week with a delegation of German enterprise leaders, regardless of requires the EU to wean itself off its commerce dependence on Beijing. 

Berlin’s seeming do-it-alone perspective is grating Paris, which had invited Angela Merkel and Jean-Claude Juncker, then German Chancellor and Fee chief, when Xi visited Paris in 2019.