There was one person missing in Paris on Saturday evening as France celebrated the resurrection of Notre Dame cathedral. The original guest list included Ursula von der Leyen – but the president of the EU Commission was a no-show. According to whom one believes, Europe’s most powerful politician didn’t take her place in the pew alongside Emmanuel Macron, Donald Trump et al because of what a spokesman described as an ‘internal miscommunication’.
That’s the diplomatic take. The other story is that a ‘furious’ Macron withdrew von der Leyen’s invitation after she signed off the EU Mercosur trade deal with South America on Friday. Struck with Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia, the agreement paves the way for tariff reductions and easier market access with Europe. A report in the French newspaper L’Opinion says the president of France took the news ‘very badly’ and retaliated by disinviting von der Leyen from the reopening of Notre Dame, five years after the cathedral was ravaged by fire.
Negotiations for the trade deal began in 1999 so why protest now?
The conclusion of the Mercosur deal had angered the political class in France, achieving the unusual feat of uniting the left and the right. Last month, the National Assembly rejected the free trade agreement by 484 votes to 70. But French MPs knew that their non-binding vote was purely symbolic. Marc Fesneau, Macron’s former minister for agriculture, predicted that it would have no effect on von der Leyen, ‘and in the end there will be Mercosur’.
In contrast to the anger in Paris – not to mention the apprehension as to how French farmers will react to a deal that will devastate their industry – there was delight in Berlin. Chancellor Olaf Scholz hailed the agreement, declaring that ‘more than 700 million people will be able to benefit from a free market, more growth and competitiveness’. The German car and chemical industries will be particular beneficiaries of the agreement.
Poland shares France’s hostility to Mercosur and, as in Paris, it is a hostility that crosses political lines. Prime Minister Donald Tusk disapproves and so does the main opposition party, the conservative PiS. Their candidate in next year’s presidential election, Karol Nawrocki, pointed the finger at Berlin, saying: ‘We know that Germany has its national interest in South America related to the export of its automotive and technological products, and that’s why it is so adamant in driving the entire EU to sign the Mercosur agreement, which is unfavourable to Polish farmers.’
French anger is exacerbated by the belief that von der Leyen took advantage of the political chaos in Paris to push through the deal. But the blame ultimately lies with the French parliament; after all, negotiations for the trade deal began in 1999 so why protest now?
A decade before negotiations got underway, the Berlin Wall had fallen and Germany became one country again. In public, the president of France, Francois Mitterrand, was broadly positive but in private he feared for the future. ‘The reunification of Germany is good news for Europe, not for France,’ he was quoted as saying.
Mitterrand died in 1996 and subsequent generations of French politicians ignored his fears, tying themselves ever closer to Germany in the mistaken belief that theirs was a ‘special relationship’ within Europe. The mainstream media have colluded in this delusion until only recently. The first to break ranks was the weekly current affairs magazine, Marianne, which in April 2021 devoted an issue to explaining ‘How Germany has fleeced France’.
It was not well received in Paris, as the magazine’s editor anticipated. ‘We have an elite who are so in thrall to our German neighbours that the moment anyone legitimately defends our national interests, the elite cry “Germanophobia”,’ explained Natacha Polony.
Polony’s view is corroborated by the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, one of the most influential institutions of its kind. In a report this year it stated that Germany has been the ‘super profiteer’ of the EU this century.
The Élysée issued a bullish statement in response to the signing of the Mercosur deal, claiming that ‘the agreement has neither been signed nor ratified. So this is not the end of the story’. Few in France have any faith in their president or their political class to stand up to von der Leyen though.
The farmers certainly don’t. On Friday, a group of them walled up the constituency office of MP and former president Francois Hollande in Corrèze in the south-west of the country. ‘If he doesn’t want to defend his farmers and his region, he doesn’t need a permanent office in Corrèze’, said one of them.
They are angry with Hollande because he was one of the MPs who voted to bring down the government last week, a government whose budget had promised aid to the agricultural industry. They also bear a grudge against him because, when he was president of France a decade ago, he spoke favourably of the Mercosur agreement.
Hollande was the most Germanophile of French presidents, or were one to be unkind, their poodle. ‘He has so far shown little ability or even desire to resist German influence,’ regretted a French newspaper in 2013, a year into his presidency.
Hollande obeyed Angela Merkel’s request (‘demand’ might be more accurate) to drastically reduce France’s reliance on nuclear energy, a catastrophic decision that had terrible ramifications after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. He also timorously acquiesced to the former chancellor’s decision in 2015 to open Europe’s borders to more than a million refugees and migrants, saying it would be a ‘tragic error’ to do otherwise.
Macron has shown little inclination to stand up to German bullying, whether it comes from Berlin or Brussels. He may have withdrawn Ursula von der Leyen’s invitation to Notre Dame but trying to withdraw France from the Mercosur deal won’t be so straightforward.
Comments