Merz calls for “restart” for Europe as new chancellor makes first official trips to France, Poland

The new German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has called for a “restart” of Franco-German relations at his first international trip on Wednesday (7 May), after his government officially started work the day before. In Paris, Merz met with French president Emmanuel Macron, upholding a tradition for the new chief of government that underlines the close ties between the EU’s two most influential member states.

“Emmanuel Macron and I have agreed a German-French restart for Europe. We will breathe new life into the German-French friendship and intensify our cooperation on all levels,” Merz said in a report by public broadcaster ARD. “We will only be able to respond to challenges if France and Germany stand together even more closely than in the past,” Merz said, adding that he would also work to strengthen the so-called Weimar Triangle, a forum for trilateral cooperation between France, Germany, and Poland. The chancellor said that the integration of capital markets would be a key instrument in achieving greater cohesion and raising funds for common projects in Europe.

French president Macron said Paris and Berlin would seek deeper integration on investment policies, security, energy, and space travel “without naivety but with a joint target and joint steering.” This would mean “synchronisation and coordination,” for example in labour policies and taxation, Macron added. The French president said the two governments would work to ensure that “low-carbon energy sources are no longer discriminated, for example nuclear power and renewables.” This would require investments in grids and cross-border infrastructure. Macron added that a working group would be set up to jointly improve European competitiveness and reduce regulation.

At the following visit to Poland’s capital Warsaw on the same day, Merz met with Polish prime minister Donald Tusk, who called the new chancellor’s visit “a new opening, maybe the most important one in German-Polish history in more than ten years.” Merz said he would aim “with great determination” to improve infrastructure connections between Germany and its eastern neighbour Poland to make them “just as good as infrastructure towards the West,” newspaper Tagesspiegel reported. It should become “just as natural” to travel to Warsaw or Prague by train from across Germany “as it has been for years to travel to Brussels or Paris.”

On Friday (9 May), Merz made his first visit as chancellor to Brussels, where he met with the president of the European Council, Antonio Costa. Asked whether the new resolve in German EU politics would mean that the country is open to finance joint debt in Europe, Merz said he would “not change the German government’s position” on this question. This would mean that joint debt will remain an absolute exception, Merz argued.