A “clandestine” meeting between the two “heavyweights” of EU leaders. This is how the Politico website defines tonight’s dinner in Paris between the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and the French President, Emmanuel Macron. The dinner, which is held a few days beforearrival in Europe of Chinese President Xi Jinping (expected on Sunday in France and then in Serbia and Hungary), is described by three sources as a semi-private event: Scholz and his wife, Britta Ernst, are on holiday in the French capital and will meet Macron and his wife Brigitte in a restaurant.
No advisors will be allowed around the table and it is easy to hypothesize that European policy towards China could be one of the issues that will be addressed by the two leaders, who have had various clashes in recent years, starting withsending ground troops to Ukraine. A hypothesis, the latter, which Macron relaunched in the last few hours in an interview with the Economist. Another source of tension between France and Germany is the potential imposition of EU duties on Chinese electric vehicles.
The dinner will also be an opportunity for Scholz to inform the French president of his meeting with Xi in Beijing last month. According to Noah Barkin of the German Marshall Fund, Macron will try to convince the chancellor to join the meeting with Xi next week together with the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
Another probable topic of the dinner will be the EU defense policy and its financing. Macron is pushing hard for so-called ‘defense bonds’, which would involve joint European debt issuance to finance military investments. Scholz has so far rejected the idea.
