Nicolas Sarkozy mentioned the war – but he got away with it

 

Nicolas Sarkozy waves goodbye to Angela Merkel as she leaves the Elysee Palace following their meeting in Paris. Photograph: Remy de la Mauvinere/AP

Nobody wanted to mention the war. But they did anyway. With an explosion of anti-German feeling in France, it was difficult to avoid the historical stereotypes as Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel met in Paris on Monday to announce that, from now on, they would be running Europe.

If anyone was in any doubt who was in charge, they only had to see the arrangement of the three flags behind the two leaders as they gave their end of mini-summit press conference.

There was the French tricolour red, white and blue to the right and the German black, red and yellow tricolour to its left. If you looked carefully at the artful arrangement, you could just spot the European Union flag behind, with only two of its stars showing.

This was the backdrop for the long-awaited union of Europe's most unlikely couple. Sarkozy and Merkel tiptoed around each other, talking of "amitié" and "entente" and "alliance" and "a dynamic, living relationship".

But the French president just came right out with it: there had been "70 years of bloody conflict, followed by 70 years of peace", he said. Germany and France "had to understand each other".

What, asked one journalist, did Frau Merkel think of the outbreak of Germanophobia in France that has seen her likened to Germany's first chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, who humiliated France in the Franco-Prussian war in 1870?

The insults, which have come mostly from the political left in France, included that Germany was "drunk with power" and suffered a "mental rigidity".

"I have read much of what the press has written about Germany," she said. "What people should know is that we are working together to find common solutions ... We will never confront each other as we did before".

Sarkozy, who had been jiggling from foot to foot every time his German partner answered a question, said with untypical understatement that the insults were "hurtful".

But the French leader has not been spared the historical stereotypes. Leftwing Parisian MP Jean-Marie Le Guen said Sarkozy's meeting with Merkel was like French prime minister Edouard Daladier's role at the 1938 Munich Conference when Daladier, Neville Chamberlain and Italy's fascist leader Benito Mussolini appeased Hitler.

With great gallantry, Sarkozy said Merkel should know "so as not to be hurt", that these anti-German sentiments "are not held by those in charge" in France. That, he added, was all he was going to say. Then he said some more: it was just too dangerous to go down roads mined with historical references; the Franco-German friendship was above left-right party politics, and the relationship between the two countries was "too serious to play with".

But the war genie was out of the bottle and he could not put it back.

"What happened before, must never happen again," he said, this time referring to the Greek debt crisis.

Concluding that Europe, that is France and Germany, had to act quickly he spoke of a "forced march to reestablish confidence in the eurozone and the euro". Merkel stood, stock still, gripping the lectern and nodding.

The meeting at the Elysée Palace followed weeks of what Sarkozy had called – again perhaps a little insensitively in the circumstances – "collaboration".

As she emerged for the lunchtime summit from her limousine, the pair pecked cheeks – the French call this "bises" (little kisses) – shook hands vigorously, posed for the cameras, shook hands vigorously again and disappeared inside.

Could we know what they would be eating over their working lunch? "No. NOT AT ALL", barked a woman from the presidential staff. Nearly two hours later – it was a French lunch after all – everyone was still waiting for the happy couple to make an appearance.

The pair have been thrashing out a prenuptial agreement to their long awaited union. While it is quite obviously an arranged marriage rather than a match made in heaven, when it came to the big day, both were keen to play up their friendship and fondness for each other.

Was this really the man who, in 2005 as interior minister, had described the Franco-German alliance as "obsolete" and "superseded by a new Europe", and who reiterated these sentiments when he was elected president in 2007.

Far from being outdated, the French-German alliance and entente was, Sarkozy declared, "essential for Europe" because France and Germany were the "two great economies of Europe".

The president looked at the chancellor. Had his use of "we" instead of his usual "I", been enough to win her over? She gave him an encouraging nod.

It is said there is little personal love lost between the hyperactive, nervy Sarkozy and the solid, sensible Merkel described by many as being like fire and ice. Here, the pair were like an old couple avowing their "absolute determination" to sort things out and staying together for the sake of the children.