For months, French President Emmanuel Macron has been waiting for a response from Berlin regarding his EU reform ideas. Now Angela Merkel is coming to Paris as the re-elected chancellor. But he shouldn’t expect too much.
Things are moving quickly now that Germany finally has its new government: Germany’s new foreign minister, Heiko Maas of the Social Democrats (SPD), flew to Paris on the very same day he was sworn in. The chancellor is not wasting time, either. Less than two days after her fourth election to the chancellorship, she’s in Paris.
Merkel has taken Finance Minister Olaf Scholz with her, because the two governments have a number of fiscal policy issues to discuss as a priority during the bilateral meeting. And Macron is likely to pay very close attention to whether the Christian Democrat (CDU) chancellor and her SPD finance minister have differing opinions on these issues.
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Judging by what individual representatives of the CDU, its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) and the SPD have said so far about Macron’s reform ideas, the grand coalition partners have indeed taken different positions. Until now, Scholz has held back because he knows that within Germany he is expected to continue the solid (some say, stingy) financial policy of his CDU predecessor Wolfgang Schäuble.
However, other SPD politicians have been extremely enthusiastic about Macron’s ideas. Former SPD leader Martin Schulz — who also previously served as European Parliament president — had made a positive German response to Macron’s ideas a prerequisite for a new grand coalition. As recently as Wednesday, new top diplomat Maas said in Paris that he had come to “finally take the outstretched hand of Emmanuel Macron with his proposals for the renewal of Europe.”
For more read the full of article at The DW
