Role reversal: how foot-dragging France blindsided newly assertive Berlin  

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz was making one last push to persuade EU leaders to use €210bn in frozen Russian sovereign assets to help Ukraine when he realised he lacked a critical ally: Emmanuel Macron. In the weeks leading up to Thursday’s summit in Brussels, the French president did not publicly oppose the German proposal. Privately, however, his team voiced reservations about its legality and warned that his indebted country would struggle to issue a national guarantee in case the assets had to be returned to Moscow on short notice. As more countries, including Italy, sided with Belgium, where the bulk of the Russian assets are located and whose government opposed the plan from the outset, Macron joined in, killing the idea. 

 “Macron betrayed Merz, and he knows that there will be a price to pay for that,” said a senior EU diplomat with direct knowledge of Thursday’s talks. “But he’s so weak that he had no other choice but to fold in behind Giorgia Meloni.” The stand-off underscores a new dynamic between Europe’s two largest powers: an initiative-driven Germany and a foot-dragging France. A newfound assertiveness has taken hold in Berlin after Merz came to power in May — unlocking up to €1tn in defence and infrastructure spending for the next decade — but Paris has become hamstrung by high public debt and political instability in the second half of Macron’s final term in office. 

 The imbalance has dashed hopes of a major reboot of the Franco-German engine that once powered some of the EU’s biggest policy leaps. “In Brussels there’s a real sense that Berlin is the big player and that France’s influence is lacking,” said Georgina Wright, a Paris-based senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the US, an American think-tank. Merz has sought to turn the page on three years of German indecision under his predecessor Olaf Scholz, who was often forced to abstain in Brussels because of divisions within his coalition — a pattern that became known as the “German vote”. After Merz’s Christian Democrats won elections in February, he made resetting relations with France a priority. 

 That agenda included pledging to boost European defence in the face of an unreliable US administration, dropping Germany’s opposition to nuclear energy and slashing EU regulation. Since then, however, the German leader has had to contend with a lame-duck Macron who is severely constrained in his ability to commit to anything that has financial implications. “It’s a complete role reversal between Macron and Merz,” said Mujtaba Rahman, head of Europe at Eurasia Group. “Over the course of the last four to five years the operating thesis in the Élysée has been that German weakness has compromised Europe’s capacity to act. “Now there is a chancellor who understands geopolitics, who wants to lean in and do more on Europe . . . but it is Paris now that is unable to deliver on its side of the bargain.” 

 Another flashpoint at the summit was the EU-Mercosur trade deal with a group of Latin American countries. After more than 25 years of negotiations, Merz has for months been pushing for the agreement to be inked by the end of December, threatening a vote in which France risked being outnumbered. But the centrist, pro-EU Macron once again found an unlikely ally in Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s rightwing Eurosceptic prime minister, who secured a delay of a few weeks — denying Merz another political victory.  “There is true recognition on both sides that the relationship must be more efficient, that it didn’t work under Scholz,” said Daniela Schwarzer, political scientist at the Bertelsmann Stiftung in Berlin. “But France is under far greater pressure — and this is causing fundamental differences between the two powers to resurface. Trade is such an area.” 

 Despite the apparent disunity between Merz and Macron there was still a breakthrough at the summit, as the bloc agreed to issue a €90bn loan to Ukraine backed by the EU budget. An Élysée official insisted that Macron had been instrumental in securing the agreement: “France’s objective has always been to provide Ukraine with financial visibility for the next two years. We were open to the proposed financing arrangements and worked to find a solution that would meet this objective.” Meloni also pledged to back the Mercosur agreement next month, clearing the path for the deal to be signed regardless of France’s objections. “On Mercosur, France may have won two or three weeks but has lost the battle,” said Joseph de Weck, a fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “But on both topics there is no common leadership, it’s Merz pushing.” 

 Further straining the Franco-German tandem in the coming weeks is a looming decision on whether to continue a joint €100bn industrial deal as France’s Dassault and Airbus, whose defence division is based in Germany, refuse to solve a dispute over workshare. Berlin has considered other jet partnerships, frustrated with Dassault and wary that Paris is only after its money. In many respects France and Germany have rarely been more aligned as they face higher US tariffs and threats from President Donald Trump to pull troops from Europe. Both agree on support for Ukraine and the need for the continent to take a more active role in peace talks through a “coalition of the willing” which also includes the UK. Merz has embraced concepts long championed by Paris including European strategic autonomy, a “buy European” preference in defence procurement and greater protection of the single market from unfair competition. Most recently Berlin has backed trade defence measures against Chinese steel imports, a departure from Germany’s previous position. “In a way the EU has never been so French — embracing industrial policy, security policy, largely thanks to Macron — just as France itself is retrenching,” said Wright. “But in Brussels, there is a growing sense that France is prioritising national interests over EU ones . . . The old saying that ‘France is all words, words, words, no action,’ is making a comeback.” Merz is also facing growing impatience and distrust at home as he returns with diplomatic setbacks. Recommended News in-depthWar in Ukraine How Friedrich Merz’s EU summit plan on frozen Russian assets backfired German officials have been keen to stress that the EU loan to Ukraine will be backed by parts of the EU budget that remain untapped, with no impact on national finances. 

 Merz himself said he was pleased by this week’s outcome, even saying it was a better solution than his and insisting that the Russian assets could still be used to reimburse the EU loan. “We are making an advance payment, but it is secured by Russian assets,” he said. Even so, criticism poured in from the far-right Alternative for Germany, whose co-leader Alice Weidel claimed that the “German taxpayer will have to foot the bill again”. “It’s not great to come home without Mercosur or the plan on Russian assets,” said Guntram Wolff, senior fellow at Bruegel. “The question for Macron is whether it is smart to impose political losses on Merz on two big issues.”