Germany's EU policy: The elephant in the European china shop

Emmanuel Macron is looking for his allies, where he can find them.

Less than two days after the appointment of the new Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the French President paid her respects in Rome over the weekend.

That in itself is remarkable.

The process gains additional significance if you look at it in context: a few days earlier, Berlin and Paris had canceled the symbolic Franco-German Council of Ministers;

Shortly thereafter, Macron said at the EU summit in Brussels that Germany was “isolated” in the EU.

The current status of Franco-German relations and thus also Germany's role in the EU can hardly be described more clearly.

The Chancellor's trip to Paris this Wednesday is therefore not a routine event, even if Olaf Scholz would like us to believe otherwise.

In discussions with Macron, the chancellor has to put together porcelain that should never have been smashed.

The main responsibility for the deep rift between the two governments lies in Berlin.

The indifference with which the traffic light coalition treats France must be unsettling.

The conflict is not about content

Economically trained optimists may interpret the conflict as a dispute on the merits, i.e. as a sign that Berlin will one day oppose an interventionist government in Paris that wants to impose a gas price cap on the EU and want to further Europeanize national debt with a new EU fund.

Such a dispute about economic and European policy content would be worthy of all honor.

At the EU summit last week, there was also a struggle over gas price caps and a debt fund.

If it were only about this content, one would have to say that Germany has lost the dispute.

The provisional compromise reached by the heads of state and government was certainly not in the interests of Germany.

But the conflict was not and is not primarily about content.

Things are crunching between Berlin and Paris not only along well-known economic policy front lines.

The point is that the federal government has deliberately and unnecessarily alienated other EU countries in the past few months.

Scholz in particular has performed as an elephant in the European china shop.

The way in which the Chancellor propagated the German "double boom" against the consequences of the energy crisis led to completely exaggerated (and thus avoidable) counter-reactions in the EU.

The possibility of an EU debt fund therefore remains.

Germany has thwarted justified criticism of a gas price cap by buying gas in recent months at prices that other countries could not afford.

There was also a lack of understanding that Scholz had to use his policy competence to enforce the slightly longer operation of a single additional nuclear power plant.

And Macron won the dispute over the construction of the Midcat gas pipeline, in which the Chancellor got involved.

Macron's thesis of Germany's isolation has a kernel of truth

The Frenchman's finding that Germany is isolated in the EU may be exaggerated.

But it has at least one core of truth, because criticism of Berlin comes not only from the Mediterranean countries, but also from northern and eastern member states.

Their distrust is also fueled by the fact that the largest EU economy has made itself so dependent on Russian energy supplies and is still so reluctant to deal with Ukrainian requests for arms supplies.

Germany's errant European policy may also have something to do with the fact that the two small coalition partners are not pulling in the same direction.

Their economic and financial policy heavyweights, Habeck and Lindner, are well versed (and well advised) on EU issues.

Scholz, on the other hand, sometimes acts disinterested, sometimes clumsy, sometimes ruthless – and always self-righteous.

Therefore, it is usually not clear whether he offends his partner on purpose or by mistake.

The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle: he usually doesn't care about the others.

Germany cannot afford that, especially not in these times.

It is a truism that the EU is in a bad position when its largest member state is on an odyssey.

But it is also about German interests.

If Macron turns away from Berlin in the direction of Rome, Madrid and Lisbon, nothing good will come of it, neither for the German economy nor for the German state and its budget.