In European defence, it’s the Franco-Polish engine
Warsaw and Paris are driving the new EU approach
The shared ambitions and priorities of France and Germany, two of Europe’s largest countries, have long been understood as the driving force of European integration. The ‘Franco-German engine’, as it’s known in English, creates the compromises that can bring on board the rest of the EU to advance major policy decisions. The two states are able to hold the perfect balance of economic clout, political power, desire to work together and distinct national preferences to find European solutions, without necessarily needing to negotiate through every single European country.
It's an engine that has often struggled in the last couple decades. The financial crisis ruptured the general balance between the two by setting up France as a debtor nation and Germany as a creditor. The shared crisis of the pandemic helped bring a spark back to the motor and enabled the historic issuance of EU debt in order to pay for investment and recovery policies but this was the exception that proved the rule. Macron and Scholz have a particularly bad relationship, with regular disagreements and public clashes.
Is the Franco-German engine dead? Probably not and we shouldn’t read too much into the specifics of one President and one Chancellor. There are structural, political and cultural reasons that tend to make the relationship unavoidable, even when it’s not delivering the best performance. That said, there are time when it makes sense to explore other partnerships. Given the urgency of climate change, the rapid development of new digital technologies, and of increasing geopolitical stability, it’s obvious that now is one of those times.
It is at this point that Poland steps in, especially on matters of defence. While the country has been noted as the star of the Eastern European countries, growing rapidly and being in the first group to join the EU and NATO, almost a decade under a right-wing, nationalist government meant that Warsaw struggled to exercise real influence on the EU stage as areas of commonality were obscured by disputes over the rule of law. It has therefore been a blessing for Europe that liberal moderates took power again following the elections in October last year.
Poland is also one of the leading Russia hawks and was quick to respond to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine by boosting its own defence spending. Under current plans, the national defence budget this year will be over 4% of GDP, far higher proportionally than most Western democracies. Poland has also been active in providing military aid to Ukraine and has consistently advocated for EU policies that involve tougher sanctions on Russia and more assistance to Kyiv.
So as France shifts its own position on Russia, where else to turn but to Warsaw? Other Eastern European countries may be as hawkish but are all much smaller in size (and therefore lack political heft). Other Western European countries, including Germany, are too dovish and fear escalation more than they value Ukrainian victory. Poland’s growing military also makes it a much more interesting match for France, itself the holder of one of Europe’s biggest and most well-equipped armies.
What this all means is that finding the European solution on defence is in the hands of Paris and Warsaw.
This development is still recent, and so the picture could still change, but the only likely alternative would be for Germany to decide it wants a more pro-active role on European defence. Yet this is impossible when the country’s leadership won’t step up on the most pressing defence issue facing Europe today: standing up to Russia.
Too many in Berlin still think that some kind of accommodation with Moscow can be reached, that ultimately it is possible to slow down and wind down the war in Ukraine into a kind of inactive stalemate (to “freeze” the war, as on Scholz ally said). Putin’s repeated escalation and aggression in the face of perceived weakness has failed to shift this mindset and it runs deep in the German social democrats.
This is why talk of a fight between Paris and Berlin over European leadership on the approach to Russia is misplaced. There can be no fight if one of the fighters isn’t taking part. Berlin has simply ceded the field to Paris. So the French government is taking the opportunity and running with it.
As a result, what we are seeing now is that France and Poland are teaming up to set the agenda and steer Germany towards accepting the new direction.
We saw evidence of this just recently when France, Poland and Germany met to discuss their approach to Ukraine. Following the public ruptures between Macron and Scholz over whether to rule out the presence of European soldiers in Ukraine, the meeting was presented as an opportunity to set up a consensus position.
In this they were successful. The trio (known as the ‘Weimar triangle’) committed to boosting industrial cooperation with Ukrainian defence firms, buying more ammunition from sources around the world, gathering countries to supply more long-rang missiles and using frozen Russian assets to fund purchases of military equipment for Ukraine.
These are all necessary and welcome steps. Notably, the clear decision to use the windfall profits from Russian assets represents a welcome shift from the previous legal anxieties expressed by Germany and France. Similarly, there does seem to be some movement from Germany on long-range missiles, even if the final iteration likely won’t involve directly sending Taurus missiles to Ukraine.
Overall, the meeting demonstrated a new method for the construction of EU defence policy. With Paris and Warsaw now thinking along similar lines, the two together represent a sufficiently powerful duo, not to bypass Berlin, but to guide it towards a new, more proactive and forceful defence policy.