It is the hallmark of successful political leaders that they know how to shift the agenda. For all his many faults, Emmanuel Macron is one such politician. After the French parliament’s no-confidence vote in Michel Barnier as Macron’s prime minister on 4 December, the French president appeared to be mortally wounded. Opposition parties called on him to resign. Investors were wondering whether France would be headed towards a sovereign debt crisis. Yet now he is back on the world stage as one of the only European leaders who seems to know how to deal with Donald Trump. During their bilateral meeting on 7 December ahead of the ceremonial reopening of Notre Dame cathedral, Macron and Trump made an obvious demonstration that they get along pretty well.
Meanwhile, the two most powerful Germans, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, and Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, were notably absent in Paris.
Scholz never invested political capital into the Franco-German relationship. Macron did – during his first term when Angela Merkel was German chancellor – but he found Scholz difficult to deal with, and mostly on the other side of political debates, especially on trade.
Macron’s relationship with Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is also not great. The two clashed in the past in the EU and in G7 meetings. But they have one important thing in common: they are the EU leaders Trump trusts. Unlike Scholz, Meloni was present in Paris for the Notre Dame reopening. She, Trump and Elon Musk held a private meeting in the Élysée Palace, an honour French presidents do not accord to other European leaders very often.
Macron and Meloni have something else in common: a growing political distance from Von Der Leyen. It was Macron who suggested the idea of a Von Der Leyen Commission presidency in 2019. This year, when the EU nominated her for a second term, he only reluctantly supported her. She, in turn, rejected Macron’s first choice as the French commissioner in Brussels, the previous industry commissioner Thierry Breton. Von Der Leyen forced Macron to nominate another candidate, with a lower profile and who almost failed the nomination hearings in the European Parliament.
Meloni had a similar experience. She opposed Von Der Leyen’s nomination as Commission president outright. Her nominee for the Commission, Raffaele Fitto, also almost did not make it, as he was opposed by the left in the European Parliament, and only managed to get appointed after some heavy arm twisting. The EU’s establishment chose not to co-opt Meloni into their fold, and instead to rely on the same old majorities of centre-right, liberals, centre-left and Greens that supported Von Der Leyen in 2019. As Macron, too, is drifting away from the European consensus, a new diplomatic divide is emerging.
I would not speak of a Franco-Italian alliance yet. The test will be the Mercosur trade deal between the EU and Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. A few days before the Paris celebrations, Von Der Leyen travelled to Montevideo to sign the Mercosur deal in spite of French opposition. The EU and the Mercosur countries had been negotiating this deal for 25 years. Macron, a free-trade sceptic like Trump, now seems hell-bent on killing it. He may succeed. He has Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, on his side. If Meloni also opposes the deal, the three would be close to a blocking minority in the EU Council. The argument against the deal is that it puts European farmers at a disadvantage as they would have to compete against Argentinian beef farmers who are under no obligation to observe EU green policies.
Germany is the multilateral free trader amongst European countries – in alliance with other, mostly northern European trading nations. The UK, if it were still a member of the EU, would have been on Germany’s side. Scholz also opposed EU tariffs on Chinese electric cars, which were supported by Macron and Meloni. What separates France and Italy one side, and Germany on the other are fundamental differences over economic policies. On trade, Macron is closer to Trump than other European leaders. Macron, like Trump, seeks re-industrialisation, and thinks of industrial policy in terms of geostrategic interests – a notion that is alien to the Germans and many other Europeans.
Meloni has not yet decided whether she will support the Mercosur deal or not. My understanding is that, currently, she is not inclined to support it unless the provisions for farmers are relaxed. But that would mean that the EU would have to reopen the deal. At this point, I would not bet the Latin Americans would go along with this.
More remarkable than the perception of a Franco-Italian détente is the sheer degree of German isolation. Scholz has now completely disappeared from the world and European stage, fighting what looks like an increasingly desperate election campaign back home. The days when Merkel was the grande dame of the European Council are a distant memory.
Friedrich Merz, the German opposition leader, acts more like a chancellor than Scholz these days. Merz has a better relationship with Volodymyr Zelensky than Scholz, and after a visit to Ukraine, dropped by Poland to see Tusk and to try to enlist Poland into a European contact group for Ukraine. This is another relationship in which Scholz failed to invest political capital. He had a good working relationship with Joe Biden, but no close allies in the EU.
Merz is more deeply anchored in the European policy consensus over Ukraine, but by the time he can expect to become chancellor, around the middle of next year, the war will probably be over, or frozen. We should expect a different style of leadership in Berlin. But in the end, I am not sure that German positions will shift much. Merz labours under the delusion that he can agree to a free trade deal with Trump. He not only underestimates Trump, but also fails to understand why Trump wants to impose tariffs on foreign, and especially German, imports.
I expect that Donald Trump will not find it hard to exploit EU disunion. I am not sure that Merz will be prepared for this. Macron and Meloni, however, will.
[See also: Bashar al-Assad will find no peace in Moscow]
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