As France’s presidential election campaign gathers steam, Berlin is starting to take precautions.
Timo Lochocki, a conservative Vordenker (“thought leader”), suggests Berlin needs to de-risk from Paris come the presidential election in April 2027. He used to be an advisor to Jens Spahn, the former Christian Democrat (CDU/CSU) parliamentary leader. “Instead of wishful thinking about France, Germany should prepare for the forging of new alliances and diversifying of technology partners to minimize risk,” Lochocki warns. Berlin must organize its economy and defense more around a “Hansa 2.0” with Eastern and Nordic European countries, he argues.
Lochocki’s argument doesn’t come out of nowhere. Germany’s military is wary of switching to a French artificial intelligence (AI) system, Arcadia, to replace Palantir. What is to be gained by replacing a US risk with a French one? Officials now push for Germany to build its own sovereign data-integration platform, as POLITICO reports, citing an internal government report.
The Austrian diplomatic historian Muamer Bećirović argues that under President Emmanuel Macron, France has wasted its chance to lead European defense. More structurally, differing threat perceptions mean true pan-European defense integration is impossible. Germany must thus step up as an “ordering center” of a “Middle European defense union,” which comprises the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia, and Slovakia, he says.
Another Austrian, the military analyst Franz-Stefan Gady, is stressing that “Germany needs to go it alone” when it comes to building up military power. The Federal Republic first has to become a fully-fledged military force that has most of the capabilities to act on its own, Gady says, before it can invite other smaller European nations to plug into it. Germany, in short, needs to become a bit like the US in NATO: the leader others rally around.
Certainly, the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) has never been as close to power as now. In the campaign, Marine Le Pen has already suggested plugging France’s gaping budget hole by cutting financial aid to Ukraine. RN once obtained a loan from a Kremlin-linked bank. Lochocki is right to point out that a Le Pen presidency would also have consequences for EU economic policy. For instance, she no longer wants France to be the second largest net contributor to the EU budget.
A Constrained Le Pen
But while a France ruled by the far-right would certainly be a serious test for the EU, de-risking and building defense structures circumventing Paris would be the wrong response.
First, let’s acknowledge how weak, and how little room for maneuver, a President Le Pen would have.
First, there’s the politics: Winning a parliamentary majority is more difficult than winning the presidential vote. Whether a President Le Pen could win the June parliamentary elections that will follow the presidential vote is highly uncertain. And it is the French parliament, the Assemblée National, that decides on most issues relevant to Brussels, from the budget to economic policy.
And then there’s the economics: Le Pen cannot let the EU’s single market disintegrate. 54 percent of France’s exports go there. Moreover, France’s debt-to-GDP ratio stands at 117.5 percent. Le Pen would be in no position to fight Brussels for long over fiscal policy or the single market. International financial markets wouldn’t give her that breathing room.
Trust the Process
Still, Le Pen as president would oversee foreign and defense policy, where parliament’s say is limited.
Beggars can’t be choosers, but why should Berlin nonetheless trust a Le Pen France more on Russia than a Trumpian United States? Two reasons.
One is geography. US President Donald Trump says there is a “big, beautiful [Atlantic] Ocean” between Washington and Kyiv. He’s right. France has no such luxury of geographic distance. Europe’s security is France’s.
The other is France’s membership of the eurozone. If there is any doubt rising in financial markets about the eurozone fracturing, say for instance over a Russian attack on a fellow euro member in the Baltics, French sovereign bond yields would be amongst the worst hit.
The mothers and fathers of the EU have already succeeded in integrating the security and economy of European nations so much that even Le Pen in the Élysée palace couldn’t walk away from France’s European responsibilities.
And that also means that Berlin would have a lot more leverage on a French military AI system, even in a Le Pen France, than it has over OpenAI or Anthropic.
Everyone Is Unstable
Finally, the France de-risking logic ultimately leads to every European nation-state retreating back to itself. This is exactly what the far right wants.
European nations don’t need to de-risk from each other. They need to de-risk from the far right. And the best way to do this is by doing what previous generations of Europeans did: building things.
Think about Airbus. Not a single RN or Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) politician has proposed renationalizing and destroying the world’s most successful aircraft producer.
Perhaps this is the greatest missed opportunity of the abandoned Franco-German FCAS fighter jet. It would have tied France and Germany even tighter together over the next two decades, no matter what. This is a much more important issue than the question of whether or not Germany needs a plane that can land on an aircraft carrier.
Joseph de Weck is IPQ’s Euroscope columnist, an associate fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations’ (DGAP) Europe Center, and author of Emmanuel Macron. The revolutionary president.
