France and Germany

Abstract

Neither France nor Germany seem yet to have fully adjusted their external policy to the parameters prevailing on the world stage in the second half of the 1990s. This situation affects their bilateral relations and has consequences for the pace of the European integration process. On both sides of the Rhine, political leaders have had to redefine their countries’ roles on the world stage and in European affairs. In this climate of transition, it seems as if Bonn and Paris feel uneasy with each other. This despite the fact that it is now three decades since the Elysée Treaty was signed¹ by Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer, and during these three decades both capitals have established a privileged entente which kept their relations at an unprecedented level of intimacy. Indeed, in the mid-1990s, one of the greatest challenges to the special relationship that continues to bind Paris to Bonn is to rediscover and reassert their reasons for giving such priority to this relationship and to adapt its parameters to a very different national, European and international situation. If, by misfortune, their rapprochement should lose its particular nature, the damage for Europe would be tremendous.