Berlin: France and Germany, the ‘dual engine’ of European integration, have recently been caught in significant political dilemmas, including plummeting approval ratings for governing parties, the dissolution of their national parliaments, coalition collapses and cabinet adjustments.
Their domestic turmoil comes amid internal and external pressure, raising concerns about the stability and policymaking in both countries, reports Xinhua news agency.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday nominated Francois Bayrou as new Prime Minister, the fourth ever nominated this year, after a no-confidence vote last week ousted his predecessor, Michel Barnier.
Bayrou is now tasked with forming a government and pushing the 2025 budget bill through the National Assembly.
France’s political gridlock started with this summer’s European Parliament elections, which saw a heavy defeat for Macron’s Renaissance party and a victory for the far-right National Rally. This setback triggered a crisis of confidence, leading Macron to dissolve the National Assembly and call legislative elections.
Macron’s centrist coalition lost its majority in the legislative elections, resulting in a fragmented political landscape divided among the left-wing, centrist alliances and the far-right parties.
Meanwhile, France is struggling with a huge budget deficit that amounts to 6.1 per cent of its GDP, which Bayrou described as “Himalayas”.
A fragmented parliament will inevitably undermine the policymaking ability of Macron’s administration, which may lead to an uncertain period of political chaos.
Germany, Europe’s largest economy, is also mired in a political crisis. The governing coalition of the Social Democratic Party, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Greens, which took office in late 2021, broke down in November after long-standing disagreements on issues such as fiscal policy.
The firing of FDP leader Christian Lindner from the post of finance minister left Chancellor Olaf Scholz with a minority government.
As a result, the government will face a vote of confidence next week in the lower house of parliament, or Bundestag. Scholz is widely expected to lose the confidence vote, which will trigger the dissolution of parliament and lead to snap elections within 60 days.
Major parties in Germany have agreed to hold the federal elections on February 23, 2025. A new chancellor will be elected by the newly elected parliament.
Both grappling with administrative dysfunction, Germany and France are also pushing diverging agendas at the EU level, which have undermined their role as the leaders of the bloc, said Wu Huiping, deputy director of the German Studies Center at Tongji University.
Germany’s current economic downturn, Wu said, weighs heavily on the cohesion of the country’s leadership, but the economic difficulties are hard to solve as they are driven by a combination of short-term and long-term factors.
Short-term challenges include surging energy prices after the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, while in the long term, Germany’s economy has been burdened by high labor costs and corporate taxes. Too much bureaucracy, a lack of investment in infrastructure, high social welfare spending, and substantial aid to Ukraine all added to the pressures on the country’s public finances, she said.
In the upcoming months, the governments of the two nations will be tested on their ability to address internal challenges like a prolonged economic downturn and alleviating external pressure such as the war in Ukraine.
As Spanish newspaper El País opined, the political crisis in the two countries is depriving the EU of its much-needed “dual engine,” and hampering the bloc’s ability to respond to global challenges.
“There can be no strong Europe without a strong Germany and France,” it said.
–IANS
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