The old Franco-German pact has given way to shifting coalitions
Giscard supported each other on every point which came up during this European Council,” scribbled Roy Jenkins in his diary in 1977. The former British home secretary had just become president of the European Commission, the’s executive. He was struck by the extent to which West Germany and France looked out for each other. Back in those days Europe’s two central powers sorted out their differences in private, and then used their combined weight to set the agenda for the entire club.
Today things work differently. On many policy subjects, France and Germany are now openly divided. The former wants to cut short the endless Brexit negotiations; the latter is willing to prolong them. France backs the European Intervention Initiative, a European military force willing to act even when somestates disagree; Germany is keener on Permanent Structured Co-operation, a broader but less dynamic forum forsecurity co-ordination.
The geometry of European power is becoming messy. For one thing there are more splits: the old centre-right and centre-left families no longer span Europe. At the European Parliament election in May the conservatives were most successful in central and south-eastern Europe . The social democrats are rooted in Iberia and Scandinavia.
Spain under Pedro Sánchez, the recently elected centre-left prime minister, is a natural ally to Emmanuel Macron’s France. He hopes to make Spain a new third partner in the Franco-German alliance. Madrid has particularly good relations with other southern European countries like Italy and Greece, but also makes a good interlocutor for Germany.
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