Chancellor Scholz was criticized for upsetting his neighbors in Europe with his Ukraine course. The best example is probably Poland, but displeasure is also stirring in France. However, less because of the weapon question.
Emmanuel Macron has good reason to be grateful to Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The German has just attracted all the criticism in Ukraine politics once again. The decision to release Leopard 2 tanks came too late, local defense politicians complained. In general, he upset the neighboring countries with his communication and his hesitation. The French President did not have to endure anything like that. He could be accused of the same thing as Scholz: he still hasn’t decided whether he wants to send French Leclerc tanks to Kyiv or not.
At least he doesn’t accuse the chancellor of hesitation – but he has other reasons for being upset. This has to do not only with military issues, but also with energy policy. But Paris isn’t the only neighboring capital showing dissatisfaction with the federal government. In addition to the largest neighbor in the west, there is also upset with the largest neighbor in the east.
In Poland, the government has been angry about the Scholz course for months. “There has been deep-seated skepticism about German behavior since Russia’s attack on Ukraine,” says Kai-Olaf Lang from the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in an interview with ntv.de. “Germany is accused of timidity. What is called prudence in Germany is called naivety and excessive fear of escalation.”
The Russian attack on the neighboring country has caused great excitement and alert in Warsaw. Millions of refugees are in the country and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki is vehemently pushing for consistent arms deliveries – and has long since sent tanks himself, but so far only old Soviet models. In Poland, there is a fear that if Russia is successful, NATO, ie Poland, will be the next target. So you see the Scholz decision to deliver Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine as a success of your own pressure, as Poland expert Lang says. Even if in the end the Americans’ go-ahead to also send tanks was the decisive factor for Scholz.
After Scholz’s speech about the turn of the century, there was a brief moment of hope, says Lang. “But now many are saying that Germany is still using ‘hard power’, Fremdele, especially when it comes to taking a firm stand against Russia and also supplying arms.” The threat from Russia is perceived differently in Berlin and Warsaw. In Poland, the argument goes: “If the West is too cautious, there’s a risk that things will get out of hand. In Germany, people say: If the West counteracts this too strongly with arms deliveries, the risk of escalation increases.” That is one of the key differences between Germany and Poland.
This has only a limited connection to the election campaign in Poland, as SWP expert Lang says. He is certain that Germany would have to put up with the same criticism even without an election campaign – and that the opposition would also express themselves in the same way, albeit in a milder tone.
In fact, Germany’s Russia policy in recent years has been Franco-German. President François Hollande negotiated the Minsk agreements together with Chancellor Angela Merkel. There was no break with Macron, on the contrary: he was always in favor of reaching out to Moscow and Putin. In 2017, at the Sorbonne University, he also called for Europe to be militarily more independent of the United States. “In Paris, people are well aware that these French initiatives were seriously damaged by the Ukraine war,” says Jacob Ross of the German Council on Foreign Relations ntv.de. According to the France expert, many EU states in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states see that Europe is fundamentally dependent on American security guarantees. That is why Poland consistently relies on the USA, as Lang confirms.
However, Macron does not have to fear criticism from within. The conflict is perceived very differently in France, says DGAP expert Ross. “The public debate is not at all comparable to that in Germany.” It is run by experts, and it is “not an issue at all” on talk shows. A pension reform is currently more important to the French. The only thing they notice about the war in Ukraine is the inflation. But there are hardly any refugees in the country and the physical distance does the rest.
The fact that there are problems between Germany and France was already evident last fall when a joint Council of Ministers was canceled. Or when Macron “rushed ahead” at the end of December with the announcement, as it was then called in Germany, that French armored personnel carriers would be supplied to Ukraine. Days later, Scholz and US President Joe Biden followed suit and looked just like that: like stragglers. France does not see itself as someone who has “rushed ahead”, explains Ross. In the French debate, the tenor was different. So, in a way, the chancellor was nudged a little in the direction of that decision. France sees itself more as a door opener.
So Macron was once again someone who is resolutely leading the way in arms deliveries, while Scholz is a latecomer. And this despite the fact that Germany supplied the most weapons of the EU countries. Now the same pattern is emerging when it comes to the question of fighter jet deliveries: US President Biden ruled them out, as did Scholz, Macron did not do this on a trip to the Netherlands.
But Germany and France have bigger problems on other issues – such as energy policy. The dispute revolves around nuclear power. In the second half of last year it was discussed whether Germany was threatened with blackouts – which would have had catastrophic consequences for the economy. That was never likely, but bottlenecks seemed quite possible. This also had to do with the fact that in France, the old nuclear reactors went offline in droves because repairs were necessary. Germany therefore had to step in with its own energy. In the German debate, the tenor was: If only the French engineers had better control over their nuclear power plants. In France it was very different, as Ross explains: “The French press explained it with the ‘ideological nuclear phase-out of the Germans’.”
There was also a dispute over the gas issue. It was “almost an affront,” says Ross, when France canceled the Midcat pipeline project. That should bring gas from Portugal and Spain to France. Germany had hoped that the line could be extended to this side of the Rhine. There is a similar new project, but joint Franco-German action would look different.
The view of Germany in Paris and Warsaw also has things in common. Ross refers to a statement by Secretary of State Annalena Baerbock last spring. She said at the time that Germany woke up to a different world after the Russian attack on Ukraine. Ross: “France simply didn’t wake up like this. French politics and society have always lived in a world in which there was also war, in which French soldiers also died on foreign missions.” Even Warsaw did not have to change its worldview after the Russian invasion. The Poles woke up in a world they had always warned Germany about.
