In early February, Liana Fix, a German political scientist based in Washington who works for the Council on Foreign Relations, reignited an old European debate with her essay on the “German question” published in Foreign Affairs. The expert on European security and transatlantic relations warned that Berlin’s new aspiration to leadership in matters of security policy must be explained and embedded within the European context. Her argument hit a nerve, reverberating all the way to the chancellery in Berlin. During a visit to Washington, Chancellor Friedrich Merz met with Liana Fix to discuss her article.
Since then, the debate over German leadership in Europe has gained momentum even outside expert circles. More and more journalists from abroad are taking up the topic and raising it with German government officials and observers, colored by their own national contexts. The key question is the same everywhere: What does Germany’s new aspiration to leadership mean for the future of Europe?
Naturally, this issue is also on Paris’ mind. French reactions can be broadly divided into three categories: In the short term, relief that Berlin has finally understood; in the medium term, disappointment because the shift in policy remains, for now, a national one; and lastly, in the long term, concerns stemming from the combination of an unresolved German identity and current domestic political developments.
Berlin Has Understood
Let’s start with the sense of relief. This was palpable in Paris already after former Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s “Zeitenwende” speech (2022); Merz has been using a similar term, Zeitenbruch (“break with the past”).The fact that Germany had “woken up to a different world” following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as former Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock stated for the record after a crisis cabinet meeting on February 24, 2022, was welcomed in Paris: First, because it confirmed the impression there that Germany’s political elites had long been living in a dream world. They had believed in Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History” and the triumph of the democratic-liberal order longer than anyone else. Second, because the elites in Paris, including President Emmanuel Macron, claim to have woken up much earlier than the Germans and never to have succumbed to Fukuyama’s thesis in the first place.
This impression has been so powerful because it appeals to a key aspect of the dominant French identity regarding European policy. Ever since France began to fall behind Germany in many key economic indicators in the 2010s, following the financial and sovereign debt crisis and the reforms enacted by former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s coalition of center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens—including gross domestic product, export surpluses, and public debt—its status as the continent’s leading foreign and security policy power has become a vital source of collective self-confidence in Paris. Since the 2016 Brexit referendum and the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union, this has become even more significant.
The fact that, since 2022, German governments have suddenly begun to assert a confident leadership role in foreign and security policy too, poses a significant challenge to this French self-image. It doesn’t really help that, at the same time, the German economic model—which for years seemed unbeatable—suddenly appears ill-suited to the 21st century, no longer competitive, and in urgent need of reform.
More Money—for Germany
A second notable element of the French view of German rearmament is disappointment. This became publicly apparent when a significant portion of new German funds—initially from the Scholz coalition’s €100 billion “special fund” (Sondervermögen) and subsequently through the unlimited financial scope for defense spending resulting from the reform of the debt brake under Merz—was earmarked for German and non-European products rather than French ones. The Future Combat Air System (FCAS) remains the symbol of this rift to this day; its failure was confirmed by German government circles in early June following months of back-and-forth.
When Berlin decided to purchase American F-35 jets in 2022, many politicians in Paris were disappointed. Disappointment grew when the European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI), launched by Scholz, was planned to include systems from the United States and Israel but not from France. And when Merz finally expressed doubt in February 2026 that the core of FCAS—a sixth-generation fighter jet—could be built in collaboration with France, that disappointment turned to anger in many quarters.
It is not only in France that the Zeitenwende, the historic shift in German policy, and the rearmament of the Bundeswehr have been fueling hopes for a deepening of the EU. This feeling is also driven by the fact that the majority of European NATO states face looming, serious conflicts over resource allocation: The idea that NATO defense spending targets (3.5 percent of GDP by 2035) can be met while simultaneously maintaining social welfare systems at current levels will be exposed as fiscally impossible, certainly over the longer term. France and Italy, whose fiscal spaces are highly constrained, realize this, whereas Germany will have slightly more time before battles over resource allocation and conflicting priorities between defense and social spending kick in in earnest.
Meanwhile, Germany’s claim to leadership in defense policy is often implicitly linked to fiscal solidarity from Berlin, certainly in France, but also in other European coutnries. This is hardly surprising. After all, under former Chancellor Angela Merkel, during many crises, from the euro and sovereign debt crises to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was Germany’s creditworthiness, the reputation of the Bundesbank, and ultimately German taxpayers who bore the lion’s share of the costs and risks of fiscal solutions. When Scholz, Merkel’s finance minister, became chancellor himself, such expectations preceded his inaugural visit to Paris. And Friedrich Merz, too, went along with this German approach of throwing money at crises in Brussels after his plan to use frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine had failed.
Over the years, Germany’s European policy has created a powerful Pavlovian reflex: Germany’s new aspiration to leadership raises hopes of new fiscal concessions among its partners.
A German Identity Crisis
The disappointment felt by French observers returning from Berlin is increasingly mixed with concern. First, there is the worry that while Germany has plenty of money, it lacks a plan or a long-term strategy. That this became apparent early on, particularly in Paris, is hardly surprising. On the one hand, it reflects the perspective, riddled with complexities, of a state with its back against the wall fiscally. On the other, viewed more positively, it aligns with a strategic culture that has for decades made a virtue of necessity: ranging from a nationally sovereign nuclear deterrent with a comparatively modest arsenal (and concepts such as strategic ambiguity), all the way down to the tactical level with the ideal of a military leader who possesses a rugged, no-frills ethos and expertise to make much out of little in times of need. From this perspective, Germany—the former world champion in exports —is a wealthy and (still) prosperous country that can spend so much money that it doesn’t need a strategy and doesn’t have to set priorities.
Even during the coverage of Germany’s 2025 parliamentary elections—before the constitutional “debt brake” had been relaxed and while parties on both the center left and center right were hoping for comfortable majorities—foreign correspondents from France were raising pressing questions. Upon returning from trips to Wolfsburg or the Ruhr region, they asked what would fill the void in German identity once the title of “the world’s export champion” had faded and brands like Volkswagen or Siemens which, seeking to remain competitive as global companies, had fully relocated their production abroad. The fact that (West) German national identity after 1945 was based largely on economic successes, starting with the “economic miracle” of the 1950s, was viewed in France with benevolent bewilderment. That this identity now seems to be shifting toward the defense industry raises questions.
It has not gone unnoticed in France that the success of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is partly built on East German revanchism, with its proponents rejecting alignment with the West and constitutional patriotism and instead championing a nationalist renaissance that plays on references to Prussia, demands a hegemonic role for Germany in Central Europe, and characterizes Macron’s European policy as a legacy of Napoleonic conquest or a “Confederation of the Rhine 2.0.”
Concerns are growing because, at the same time, the AfD has been leading national polls for months and could come to power in eastern German federal states starting this fall. In Paris, German-Israeli historian Dan Diner recently caused a stir in an interview with the Le Monde by observing that the postwar Federal Republic of Germany is in the process of becoming Germany once again.
The Need for German Self-Discovery
Relief, disappointment, and concern are likely to accompany any German government whenever it asserts its leadership aspirations in Europe, and these will not only come from France. Decision-makers in Berlin must learn to deal with their neighbors’ new views about Germany. Mocking reflections on Germany’s helplessness in foreign and defense policy matters—a helplessness that has developed over decades—are likely to give way to a desire to be involved in Berlin’s plans at an early stage. The transitional phase of European mistrust that is likely to follow will be highly unfamiliar and uncomfortable from the perspective of German policymakers.
Nevertheless, this process is unavoidable. Germany will not be able to lead within Europe in the 21st century without first examining, reassessing, and modernizing its own identity. The notion that alignment with the West during the second half of the 20th century, with its transatlantic identity and voluntary dependence on US security guarantees, can simply be exchanged for a new, European alignment and dependencies is a dangerous illusion. In the future, Germany will have to take the lead itself and will only be taken seriously if that leadership is grounded in national self-confidence. The idea that this kind of nationalist step back can be avoided before European integration is deepened further is a German delusion, and looking at France, in particular, makes this very clear.
—Translated from the German by Kate Brown
Jacob Ross is a research fellow specializing in France and Franco-German relations at the Europe Center of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP).
