Paris and Berlin seek to manage differences

Strains likely to ease at delayed meeting shadowed by Ukraine crisis, experts say

Despite recent tensions over issues such as energy and defense, France and Germany still have many common interests and are expected to manage differences rationally when they hold a delayed cabinet meeting next month, experts say.

The French and German governments have rescheduled the joint cabinet meeting in Paris on Jan 22, the French presidency said last week. The meeting was to have taken place in October but was canceled because of differences between the EU's biggest partners on energy and defense.

France's President Emmanuel Macron invited Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz for lunch shortly after the cabinet meeting was canceled in an effort to smooth over tensions. However, a planned joint news conference after the meeting was canceled and the two countries did not issue any kind of joint statement.

Zhao Junjie, a research fellow with the Institute of European Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the conflict between France and Germany has surfaced more and more clearly this year.

Compared with Germany's previous government, its current three-party coalition, especially the Greens, has been affected more by the United States, thus the government has divided views over issues such as economics and diplomacy, and has even shown biases over certain countries, Zhao said.

The spillover effects of the Russia-Ukraine conflict have made the tensions between France and Germany more obvious, he said.

Since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict on Feb 24, EU countries have followed the US in imposing sanctions on Russia, resulting in a surge in energy prices and living costs for European countries.

Germany, which relied on Russia for more than half its gas needs, has been affected more severely than some other European countries by energy shortages and rising prices. In September Scholz announced an energy fund of 200 billion euros ($210 billion) in subsidies for people and businesses affected by high energy prices without first consulting EU allies, irking some.