For his first official visit of Chancellor, Friedrich Merz will be in Paris this Wednesday – Liberation
As it is customary in Germany, a whole new Chancellor makes his first official visit abroad in France, then in Poland. Freshly elected – in pain -, Friedrich Merz Wednesday May 7 in chief of government in Paris, then Warsaw, two capitals where He hopes to relaunch suffering relationships. He will be welcomed at the Elysée from noon, before a common press conference with Emmanuel Macron at 12:45 p.m., then a working lunch at 1:15 p.m., according to the program sent by the presidency.
The French head of state certainly congratulated him after his appointment by anticipating a Franco-German engine « Stronger than ever ». But The election this Tuesday at the Forceps Tuesday From Friedrich Merz to the supreme post by the Bundestag, after two ballot rounds when it was to be a formality, weaken it and worried the allies of Germany. Because it revealed the political fragility of the conservative leader and his coalition with the Social Democrats, on whom all of Europe had to put Germany at the center of the game after years of Surfer under the era of her predecessor Olaf Scholz and six months of internal political crisis.
« The situation in Germany is a political shock », recognized the French MEP Valérie Hayer on X. « An absolute disaster », said a French minister on condition of anonymity to AFP.
Tuesday evening, Friedrich Merz, who will then go Friday in Brussels, qualified on the NTV channel of « Very European chancellor ». Paris nourishes great hopes in the president of the German Christian Democratic Partywhich openly speaks of strengthening European sovereignty, including military.
The new German coalition government promises to « Strengthen friendship » Between Germany and France as well as with Poland, especially within the framework of the « Weimar triangle », this trilateral cooperation forum between France, Germany and Poland created in 1991.
In Warsaw, the Droit and Justice Nationalist Party (PIS), currently in opposition, continues to claim repairs for the damage and losses of the Second World War from Germany. Less than two weeks before the first round of the Polish presidential election on May 18, this subject is particularly sensitive: for the Prime Minister of the country Donald Tusk, European convincedit is difficult to display too much proximity to the German Chancellor. The Polish leader also contented himself with a brief message of congratulations and a « See you tomorrow in Warsaw ».
Other traditional differences Between these three countries, however, should not disappear overnight. Berlin certainly softened in March his rule of « debt brake », which limits the country’s borrowing capacity for military spending and for regions, but it is not ready to give the green light to Euro-obligations, promoted by France.
