As they confront a marauding Trump, trade tensions with China and their own upheavals, the bloc’s two biggest countries are at a crossroads
“When France and Germany advance, all Europe advances. When they don’t, it grinds to a halt” was how former French president Jacques Chirac put it almost a quarter of a century ago at one of the periodic love-ins between the EU’s two biggest member states.
So what would Chirac, who died in 2019, make of the current condition of the famed Franco-German engine which, since the bloc’s inception, has powered so much of the postwar European project? It looks not so much faltering as comprehensively bust.
About Author
More Stories
Melbourne stabbing: Man arrested after woman found dead at Langwarrin home on Boxing Day
Victoria fires live updates: emergency bushfire warnings and road closures in Grampians, Vic; dangerous fire conditions in South Australia and NSW
Indian Ocean tsunami: how survivors found love after Boxing Day disaster