As they confront a marauding Trump, trade tensions with China and their own upheavals, the bloc’s two biggest countries are at a crossroads“When France and Germany advance, all Europe advances. When they don’t, it grinds to a halt” was how former French president Jacques Chirac put it almost a quarter of a century ago at one of the periodic love-ins between the EU’s two biggest member states.So what would Chirac, who died in 2019, make of the current condition of the famed Franco-German engine which, since the bloc’s inception, has powered so much of the postwar European project? It looks not so much faltering as comprehensively bust. Continue reading…
Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/15/why-the-franco-german-engine-that-powered-the-eu-is-now-almost-kaput
Author : Jon Henley in Paris and Deborah Cole in Berlin
Publish date : 2024-12-15 05:00:35
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Why the Franco-German engine that powered the EU is now almost kaput
