Merkel insists she will cooperate with Macron
German chancellor’s pledge comes after tensions over French plans to relax rules on joint eurozone bonds
GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted yesterday that she wanted close cooperation with French Presidentelect Emmanuel Macron and that their two countries would do everything possible to shape European policy. “We will do everything not only to help France but also to shape the European path with France,” Mrs Merkel said ahead of talks with Mr Macron in Berlin tomorrow.
Her comments come amid tensions between the two countries over how to revive France’s economy, with pressure on Germany to support Mr Macron’s integration agenda by relaxing rules to allow for joint eurozone bonds.
Mrs Merkel and her finance minister Wolfgang Schauble have been urging France to instead implement economic reforms, including reducing its budget deficit to the EU ceiling of 3 per cent. Mr Macron, 39, who will become France’s youngest head of state since Napoleon when he is sworn in today, will need a clear parliamentary majority to push through his economic and social reforms. Hundreds of candidates for the president-elect’s party, half of whom are political novices, attended a seminar on the art of campaigning near the Eiffel Tower yesterday.
Mr Macron believes his presidential victory a week ago proves that candidates who, like him, have never before run for office, can win in the parliamentary elections next month.
Among the candidates was the policeman who commanded operations against the Bataclan terrorists. Jean-Michel Fauvergue, a former paratrooper and martial arts expert who went into the Bataclan ahead of the officers under his command to end the Isil massacre in 2015, is standing in a constituency in eastern Paris.
“He’s a very good general and it’s important to have a general,” Mr Fauvergue, 60, told The Sunday Telegraph.
“I often describe him as a war leader because he’s been able to create a whole political movement behind him in just a year, and because he’s put together a political programme that takes into account all the problems facing French society.” Mr Fauvergue left his post as head of the RAID elite police unit following controversy over an operation in the northern suburb of SaintDenis in which the alleged ringleader of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was killed.
However, he remains an well-known figure who commanded operations during most of the terror attacks in France since 2015.
Mr Macron has said he wants to rejuvenate France’s political landscape by bringing people from different walks of life into the corridors of power.