I don't speak French but I've been told that the CDU's foreign policy spokesman Friedbert Pflüger has written an op-ed in Le Figaro that, for our Francophone readers, is worth checking out. In particular is Pflüger's hope that, if Angela Merkel succeeds incumbent chancellor Gerhard Schröder, the new administration will break the Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis and revitalize the transatlantic partnership and NATO. We can only hope.
(The paraphrase comes from Christian Schmidt, the CDU/CSU spokesperson and featured guest at a conference this afternoon sponsored by the Hanns Seidel Foundation and the Hudson Institute.)
8 hours ago
3 comments:
Hey Vic,
Yeah, the third paragraph, listing the first change he thinks necessary reads something like:
Germany and France must direct, but they should not try to dominate, as was the case on several occasions over the last few years. On the one hand, they must consult more extensively on their political projects of adjusting European policy with regard, specifically to the enlarged EU and to integrating the smallest States of the Union at an opportune time. In addition, the Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis forged by Chancellor Schröder can not be maintained in the future: one can have good reasons to think differently than Washington, but the three-country summits directed against America, such those which one saw during the war in Iraq, almost forced the young democracies of Central and Eastern Europe to line up on the side of the United States and ended up dividing Europe. The EU must be a partner of the United States, strong and sure of itself; it cannot be a counterweight. Germano-Franco-Russian displays, like that of a few days ago during of the ceremonies for the 750th birthday of Kaliningrad, which abstained from inviting Poland and Lithuania, are precisely the grounds for the profound mistrust which reigns at the centre the EU. Future meetings of the three political leaders of Paris, Berlin and Moscow must serve the cohesion of and building of confidence in Europe. They must not give rise to feelings in Warsaw or Vilnius that their European partners in Berlin and Paris are pursuing policy with Moscow over the heads of the Central and Eastern Europeans.
Good stuff.
--Bill Walsh
Hey Vic,
Yeah, the third paragraph, listing the first change he thinks necessary reads something like:
Germany and France must direct, but they should not try to dominate, as was the case on several occasions over the last few years. On the one hand, they must consult more extensively on their political projects of adjusting European policy with regard, specifically to the enlarged EU and to integrating the smallest States of the Union at an opportune time. In addition, the Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis forged by Chancellor Schröder can not be maintained in the future: one can have good reasons to think differently than Washington, but the three-country summits directed against America, such those which one saw during the war in Iraq, almost forced the young democracies of Central and Eastern Europe to line up on the side of the United States and ended up dividing Europe. The EU must be a partner of the United States, strong and sure of itself; it cannot be a counterweight. Germano-Franco-Russian displays, like that of a few days ago during of the ceremonies for the 750th birthday of Kaliningrad, which abstained from inviting Poland and Lithuania, are precisely the grounds for the profound mistrust which reigns at the centre the EU. Future meetings of the three political leaders of Paris, Berlin and Moscow must serve the cohesion of and building of confidence in Europe. They must not give rise to feelings in Warsaw or Vilnius that their European partners in Berlin and Paris are pursuing policy with Moscow over the heads of the Central and Eastern Europeans.
Good stuff.
--Bill Walsh
Sorry for the double post. Don't know how that happened. Anyway, the upshot of the piece is that he wants to revive Franco-German partnership within the EU as the "engine" of the EU in such a fashion as to maintain the trust of the other countries.
As for me, I dunno. I think the smaller countries and the Central Europeans are mighty distrustful at this point. But they've railroaded through bigger problems...
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