1,200 Years of History Can’t Make Germans Trust French

In the ancient German city that first symbolized European unity, the French government has an image problem.
Aachen, the capital of Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire from the year 800, is steeped in the history of a unified European identity. French pleas for understanding as they seek to fix their economy and narrow the deficit are testing the patience of Aachen’s people, echoing the concerns of many Germans over what they see as their neighbor’s foot-dragging.
“I don’t trust the French at all,” said Pazashk Ali in the narrow bar he owns in the shadow of Aachen’s imposing octagonal cathedral, where Charlemagne is buried. “If someone doesn’t do their homework, you have to put the pressure on.”
While the European Union has helped banish the threat of war that scarred the continent from before Charlemagne’s time, the bloc’s two indispensable nations -- France and Germany -- are increasingly at odds over their economic direction as the continent struggles to shake off its slump.
Those differences were on display in Berlin yesterday at the 47th “Franco-German Financial and Economic Council,” as the French side pressed Germany to ease spending limits to spur Europe-wide growth. That clashes with German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s stance -- shared by the majority of voters -- that Europe’s biggest economy set an example with a balanced budget.

French Model

Historical disagreements are “rooted in different conceptions of the state and different conceptions about political economy,” Simon Green, a professor of European politics at Aston University in Birmingham, England, said in an interview. “The French model of capitalism is always different from the German one.”
Aachen’s location at Germany’s western extremity, at the crossroads where three countries and three languages meet, makes it a city used to European diversity. It’s just 30 miles (or 48 kilometers) from the French-speaking town of Liege, in Belgium, and the same distance from Maastricht, the Dutch town where EU heads including Germany’s Helmut Kohl and France’s Francois Mitterrand drew up the 1991 treaty that led to the common euro currency and the EU.
Charlemagne began his empire building in 771 when crowned King of the Franks. Known as the Father of Europe, he went on to unite an area that stretches from modern-day France in the west, to Poland and the Czech Republic in the east and Italy and Croatia in the south. The kingdoms of both France and Germany considered themselves his heirs, though the historic bond between them was riven by conflict until the drive for European unity after World War II.

Charlemagne Prize

Whereas Kohl and Mitterand were recognized in 1988 with a joint award for promoting European unification -- known as the Charlemagne Prize and made by the city of Aachen -- their latter-day heirs, Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, disagree on the prescription for Europe’s ills. While German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble in October spoke of his “trust” in France, the political class is struggling to bridge the divide that separates their peoples so long as the economic differences prevail.
“It shouldn’t be a question of trust,” said Markus Ziemer, a retired optician, enjoying two scoops of Italian ice cream outside Aachen’s white colonnaded theater. “There should be rules to ensure that countries keep their economy in a good order -- because they are not doing that.”

Targets Missed

Fiscal rules do exist in the euro area, it’s just that France has struggled to follow them. The EU has already given the French government an extended deadline of 2015 to bring its deficit in below the 3 percent of gross domestic product limit. Latest forecasts show it won’t reach that target until 2017 and will become the widest in the euro area in 2016.
Even as the EU commission last week sounded the alarm over France’s 2015 spending plan, officials in Brussels decided not to sanction the French government.
The German public’s distrust of French economic management is a consequence of a convenient “narrative” propagated by Germany’s politicians and media, said Sebastian Dullien, a senior policy fellow at the European Council of Foreign Relations, and professor of international economics at HTW University of Applied Sciences Berlin.
“The Germans think they did everything right, and in reality they benefited a lot from a combination of good luck and wage moderation,” he said. “If you speak to senior politicians and policy makers in Germany, they are well aware that this isn’t as easy for France as people might believe.”

‘Strong’ Germany

In Aachen -- or Aix-la-Chapelle as it’s known to the French -- the tourists taking photographs of Charlemagne’s domed cathedral pay little attention to the locals doing business at the Sparkasse on the other side of Muensterplatz square. It’s one of a chain of more than 400 savings banks owned by local government that has come to typify the culture of parsimony that many Germans say they wish the French would replicate -- along with Germany’s reforms of a decade ago to cut spending on pensions and the welfare state, and efforts to make the economy more competitive.
“Europe wants, I think, Germany to be strong; it also needs other countries to be more sensible,” said Christiane Wenzel, as she sat eating a lunchtime salad on a grassed terrace overlooking the Elisa fountain, a stone’s throw from the cathedral. “Of course that includes France.”