TOULON, France — French President Emmanuel Macron wants his lawmakers to take a more Teutonic approach to governance.
With just a hint of jealousy in his tone as he stood beside German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Macron urged opposition lawmakers planning to torpedo France’s minority government next month to instead compromise.
“On the other side of the Rhine, it appears that a conservative party and a socialist party are managing to work together,” Macron told reporters during a press conference on Friday after ministers from both France and Germany met in the southern French city of Toulon. “That happens not so far from us, and it works, so I think it’s possible.”
Opponents of French Prime Minister François Bayrou look near certain to bring down his minority government early next month over his plans to slash the budget by nearly €44 billion.
Since snap elections last summer delivered a hung parliament, Macron has tried but failed to convince lawmakers to engage in the type of compromise and coalition-building exercises common in parliamentary democracies like Italy and Germany, but rare in France.
When asked if Bayrou’s likely ouster would lead to another dissolution of parliament and fresh elections, Macron said he would not engage in “fictional politics.” He also ruled out resigning.
More support for Ukraine
Macron and Merz committed to ramp up support for Ukraine at Friday’s talks, where massive Russian strikes this week have cast further doubt on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s purported desire for peace.
Macron announced that leaders of the “coalition of the willing,” a group of Western countries working on security guarantees for Ukraine in case of a ceasefire with Russia, would speak by phone with U.S. President Donald Trump this weekend and meet with each other next week.
The French president also said that if a meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy doesn’t happen by Monday as requested by the U.S. president, it will “mean that President Putin has played President Trump.”
Speaking with the press on Thursday, Merz expressed his doubt about the likelihood of such an encounter, saying it was “obviously not going to come to a meeting between President Zelenskyy and President Putin.”
In Toulon, the two governments presented nearly 30 common projects and eight road maps outlining common priorities for European policies spanning from energy to financial services. They also announced a bilateral summit on digital sovereignty in Berlin on Nov. 18, and another on space in France next year.
Paris and Berlin also boosted their cooperation on defense matters, launching a “strategic dialogue” on nuclear deterrence and a common project on an “early warning system,” which would provide information about ballistic missile launches to NATO allies.
However, they found no common position on the EU’s trade deal with South America’s Mercosur countries, which France opposes and Germany strongly supports. The two countries also did not make major progress on their paralyzed flagship fighter jet program, the Future Combat Air System.
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