BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel hosts new French President Emmanuel Macron in Berlin on Monday for talks in which they will seek to reinvigorate the Franco-German relationship and the troubled European project that it underpins.
The election of Emmanuel Macron as French president opens up the possibility of generating more dynamism in the European project, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said ahead of a meeting with Macron later on Monday.
“Germany’s future lies in Europe. Germany will only do well in the long-run if Europe does well,” Merkel told a news conference after a meeting of her conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), victors in a regional German vote on Sunday.
“And the election of the new French president offers us here the possibility to bring dynamism into the development of Europe,” she added.
Macron, who was inaugurated on Sunday, will ram home the message that the European Union is resilient despite Britain’s vote to leave and a spate of financial and migration crises that have boosted the far-right across the bloc.
The 39-year-old former investment banker meets Merkel a day after her conservatives won a regional vote in Germany’s most populous state, boosting her quest for a fourth term in office after a national election due on Sept. 24.
With Germany’s economy, Europe’s largest, outperforming that of France, the traditional Franco-German motor at the heart of the EU project has begun to misfire. Merkel and Macron want to kick-start ties with an alliance some German media have dubbed “Merkron.”
Merkel said at the weekend she wanted close cooperation with Macron and that their two countries would do everything to shape European policy. But her ruling coalition is at odds over how to respond to his calls for closer EU integration.
“Demands like a euro zone finance minister are really dreams,” European Commissioner Guenther Oettinger, a German conservative, said before a meeting of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Berlin.
But he added: “The euro zone must be strengthened. The euro zone needs a more coherent, common approach.”
Many conservatives around Merkel, fearful the euro zone could develop into a “transfer union” in which Germany is asked to pay for struggling states that resist reforms, are skeptical of Macron’s calls for closer integration.
Last week Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) — junior partner in Merkel’s coalition — accused Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble of the CDU of trying to “torpedo” Macron’s EU reform plans for political reasons ahead of Germany’s election in September. — Reuters
