THE PAINTED smiles were fresh when Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy appeared after a lunch of sole and mango mousse following their bilateral talks in Berlin yesterday.
The two leaders’ new year message: precise budget consolidation rules, twinned with less precise European labour market stimulus measures, is the best path for the euro zone in 2012.
In their first joint appearance this year, the French and German leaders presented themselves as birds of a feather, flocking together. In reality, however, the leadership duo at the heart of Europe remain a teutonic tortoise and hyperactive French hare.
Facing a four-month countdown to an uncertain political future, Sarkozy was all high drama.
“The situation is complex and tense like never before in the euro zone,” he said, adding in the same breath: “Our task is not to over-dramatise, not to spread more fear.” Fear of change is always good for a political incumbent, and Sarkozy insisted his personal partnership with Merkel – “I have much trust in her” – was a “cornerstone for Europe” and an “alliance and understanding of shared opinion”.
Merkel was as laconic as ever, refusing to support Sarkozy’s French revolution in favour of further German evolution in 2012.
And what if ratings agencies get impatient with this approach and start downgrading Europe on a grand scale? “Fear is not the main motive of my political activity,” said Merkel drily. “We have our work to do and we do what we think is important and necessary for the future of Europe. We believe we’ve understood the sign of the times, know the lessons we have to learn from the past and are politically determined to do so.” With that, Sarkozy added, in German: “Genau!” Precisely!
In reality, though, the German leader is moving at far too slow a pace for Sarkozy’s liking. She has refused to pick up the pace on a European transaction tax, seeing it as part of the wider negotiating game of European give-and-take in the months ahead.
Pulling out last year’s script, she said that all agreements in Europe – whether on the financial tax or the wider crisis – would be “step by step . . . there’s no single-dimension solution.”
With little new substance yesterday, the Franco-German duo proved that, in the new year as in the old, it’s still every man for himself in Europe. For Sarkozy, more than ever.