France and Germany, the bedrock of Europe’s postwar stability and twin motor of the European Union, have stalled badly. Both nations have weak caretaker governments at a highly dangerous moment, with Donald Trump’s return and the fate of Ukraine in the balance—and with it Europe’s fragile border with a belligerent Russia.
Worse still, there is no likely scenario for 2025 which sees strong, stable, centrist government returning to both France and Germany. The best scenario is that Germany gets there a month or two after its general election at the end of February. France, meanwhile, could limp on until July with President Macron and another weak minority government designed to keep out both the far left and the far right, which between them have a blocking majority in the French National Assembly. But even then, there will probably have to be another French legislative election in the late summer, the earliest allowed under the French constitution; and the likely scenario thereafter is more of the same, until the next French presidential election in 2027.
With a fair wind, Germany will have a new majority government by Easter, led by the Christian Democrats’ Friedrich Merz. A long-time opponent of Angela Merkel within the CDU, Merz is seen by Germans as a bit of a right-wing firebrand. But the Thatcherite persona is fairly mainstream by international standards, and Merz is thoroughly conventional compared to Trump. He will, very likely, be in coalition with the SPD, probably under the post-Scholz leadership of Boris Pistorius, the current defence minister.
For the security of Europe, the key question is whether this Franco-German alignment is going to be capable enough to prevent a complete Trump capitulation to Putin in Ukraine.
To avoid such a catastrophe, there has to be a readiness to increase military and civil aid until a ceasefire is agreed on roughly the current boundaries, plus a willingness to locate Franco-German troops—alongside British and hopefully US forces—in the unoccupied part of Ukraine, as part of a postwar security guarantee to avoid a further Putin invasion beyond his current territorial gains.
With a free hand, both Merz and Macron would probably be prepared to make some such commitment. But whether Scholz would do so if he is still the decision-taker at the crucial moment in the spring or early summer, and whether Macron would have the authority to do so if and when it comes to the crunch, are very much in doubt. Prodding from Britain may help, but we probably have to pray that Trump does not simply walk away in January and that the Ukrainian front line does not simply collapse before any non-capitulation agreement can be reached.
It looks to me like a 50/50 call between catastrophe and a just-about defensible settlement in Ukraine. Keir Starmer will need to exert strong British influence and commitments to help persuade France and Germany—and Trump—to be constructive.
And this is just Ukraine. A continuation of Franco-German weakness would be equally disastrous for dealing with the US and China, not to mention for the modernisation of France and Germany themselves. And if all that goes wrong, populists are waiting to pounce in both countries.
