Duclos also noted the German resentment over Mercosur: “If we want more strategic autonomy, we need new partnerships,” including the EU-Mercosur trade deal, he said. “For the Germans, we don’t look serious.”
Frustrations on Mercosur and jets
When it came to finalizing that long-delayed trade deal with Mercosur, Berlin initially wanted to get Paris on board by giving in to various French concessions, but eventually gave up. “The country is on the brink of becoming ungovernable,” one German government official said of Macron’s inability to push back against fierce domestic opposition, particularly from farmers.
The FCAS joint Franco-German jet-fighter project is proving another major bugbear.
The €100 billion venture is on life support after Paris and Berlin failed to agree on how to proceed last month. According to Peter Beyer, a foreign policy lawmaker from Merz’s conservatives, French companies are exerting “massive pressure,” and “even a French president apparently cannot see beyond that.”
“Now the thinking is going so far as to perhaps do it without the French, which I think would be a disaster, but at the moment there is no progress,” he said, referencing suggestions that Germany is looking at developing a fighter jet without French manufacturer Dassault Aviation.
All of those discussions about how far the Germans want to team up with France on weapons are now also colored by the far-right National Rally leading polls ahead of next year’s presidential election in France.
“The prospect of the National Rally coming to power is already weighing heavily on French-German discussions on defense,” said Jacob Ross, a research fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations.
Laura Kayali and Gregorio Sorgi contributed reporting.