After the meeting between Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and French President Emmanuel Macron, it remains unclear how the tense relationship between the two countries will be stimulated again.

The federal government referred to "a number of cooperation projects" that were agreed on Wednesday.

They concern energy and defense policy, cooperation in space and, in addition to foreign policy, economic and trade policy.

However, the Berlin side did not want to go into detail.

Niklas Zaboji

Economic correspondent in Paris

  • Follow I follow

Existing cooperation projects between Germans and French in the above-mentioned fields have made only sluggish progress in the past few months.

At the beginning of September, Scholz and Macron publicly declared that they wanted to sign a solidarity agreement to exchange electricity and gas.

More than seven weeks later, the conversion work on the long-distance gas pipeline on the Saarland border has been completed;

Since October 12, gas has been flowing from France to Germany for the first time ever, which currently accounts for around 2 percent of daily German gas imports.

For months, Germany has also been exporting large amounts of electricity to France, which is suffering from technical problems in its nuclear power plants regardless of the energy crisis - due to maintenance and repair work, only 29 of 56 reactors were still connected to the grid on Wednesday.

However, the announced solidarity agreement is still a long time coming.

"A difficult phase"

In defense policy, the negotiations on two major projects, the German-French-Spanish FCAS fighter jet project and the German-French MGCS tank project, are only making gradual progress.

The hopes of those involved in politics and industry that the Ukraine war would quickly take the talks to the home straight have not been fulfilled.

In the case of FCAS, the division of labor is fixed for six out of seven work packages.

The tug-of-war between the companies involved, Airbus and Dassault Aviation, has been going on for months over the final details of this project, which is estimated to cost a total of 100 billion euros.

Whether an agreement is really imminent, as reported by industry circles and the French newspaper "La Tribune" reported this week, is unconfirmed.

There is no shortage of other trouble spots between Paris and Berlin.

The trade policy positioning towards China, for example, differs, and in the development of space rockets, the German government is pushing for more competition, to the displeasure of the French.

"You can only prove your strength against other nations by getting together and looking beyond your own interests," stated Thomas Buberl, head of the insurance group Axa, in an interview with journalists.

And emphasized: "The Franco-German relationship will remain important, even if it is currently going through a difficult phase."