{"id":39910,"date":"2025-04-22T02:38:09","date_gmt":"2025-04-22T02:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/39910\/"},"modified":"2025-04-22T02:38:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-22T02:38:09","slug":"can-france-and-germanys-new-love-fest-survive-their-lingering-differences-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/39910\/","title":{"rendered":"Can France and Germany\u2019s new love-fest survive their lingering differences? \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/GettyImages-2205236231-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6495894\"  \/>Both leaders now see a necessity for their militaries and defense industries to better integrate. | John Macdougall\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>The return of U.S. President Donald Trump \u2014 and his pivot away from Europe \u2014\u00a0has changed all that.<\/p>\n<p>The night his conservative Christian Democratic Union won the country\u2019s snap election in February, Merz<strong> <\/strong>\u2014 an avowed transatlanticist \u2014 called for Europe to \u201cachieve independence from the U.S.,\u201d a seismic change that resonated deeply in France.<\/p>\n<p>Nils Schmid, a German lawmaker with the center-left Social Democrats, which are in a coalition with Merz\u2019s CDU, said such a move was a stunning U-turn for both the party and its leader.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/emmanuel-macron-france-europe-donald-trump-military-support-vladimir-putin\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">True to its Gaullist legacy,<\/a> France has always been wary of becoming too dependent on the Western world\u2019s great superpower. Macron has cultivated close ties with Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden, but the French president has always pushed for a Europe that looks more like France and embraces his brand of strategic autonomy.<\/p>\n<p>With Merz, that goal appears closer than ever. Merz and Macron plan to jointly influence Brussels to cut red tape and change competition rules to help make it easier to create so-called \u201cEuropean champions\u201d in sectors such as telecommunication or technology.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ranking: <\/strong> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"41\" class=\"wp-image-6492231\" style=\"width: 200px;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Merz-4-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\"  \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Both leaders now see a necessity for their militaries and defense industries to better integrate. | John Macdougall\/AFP&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[13402,10105,22707,2106,2813,1442,6178,6215,2825,473,32,34,35,6643,2000,299,36,1945,39,1824,1197,43,22708,1303,7337,22709,46,332,7497,2824,1201,1219,657,49,22710,771,335],"class_list":{"0":"post-39910","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-angela-merkel","9":"tag-argentina","10":"tag-armaments","11":"tag-brazil","12":"tag-carbon","13":"tag-competition","14":"tag-conflict","15":"tag-cooperation","16":"tag-debt","17":"tag-defense","18":"tag-donald-trump","19":"tag-emmanuel-macron","20":"tag-energy","21":"tag-energy-prices","22":"tag-eu","23":"tag-europe","24":"tag-france","25":"tag-friedrich-merz","26":"tag-fuels","27":"tag-germany","28":"tag-investment","29":"tag-macron","30":"tag-mercosur","31":"tag-nuclear-power","32":"tag-olaf-scholz","33":"tag-paraguay","34":"tag-policy","35":"tag-russia","36":"tag-strategic-autonomy","37":"tag-tanks","38":"tag-trade","39":"tag-trade-war","40":"tag-ukraine","41":"tag-united-states","42":"tag-uruguay","43":"tag-war","44":"tag-war-in-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114379299492908115","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}