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FRANKFURT – French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, both limping in the polls, are looking for common approaches from President Trump and correcting the loopholes in the euro.
Both men need a little mutual support for the moment considering their chaotic home politics. Macron went on Sunday to participate in the annual commemoration day for victims of war and dictatorship in Germany and then talks with Merkel. Macron saw her survey ratings dwindling and Merkel is a lame duck since she said she would not seek another warrant. His conservative party lost support in recent regional elections.
Merkel offered her support for Macron's proposal to create a European army against Trump's critics. The two leaders said Europe should be less dependent on other countries, such as the United States, in its defense. Trump has destabilized the NATO alliance by demanding that member countries pay more for their defense or "protect themselves," as he said in a recent tweet.
But ceremonies and good words can not hide the persistent differences between their approaches to the economic problems of the European Union.
For example, Germany and France have apparently reached an agreement on a common budget for EU countries that use the common euro, which Macron claimed. German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz told the dpa news agency that the deal was to be presented Monday to European finance ministers and that he hoped that he would reach a agreement.
But the size of the budget – that the French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire mentioned between 20 and 25 billion euros – is well below the idea of Macron. This amount represents only 0.2% of the euro area economy, far from the few percentage points of gross domestic product originally mentioned by Macron. The compromise underscores the reluctance of the Germans to approve everything that is perceived as a transfer of money from taxpayers from richer countries like Germany to more fiscally fragile countries such as Italy or Greece.
Neither did the two parties agree to a tax on digital businesses such as Amazon and Google. The French Commission and the European Commission have proposed to impose such a tax, but Scholz said the issue should be left to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a forum for most developed countries. Given that the OECD includes the United States and that such a tax would affect American technology companies, the prospects for an agreement there are less than clear.
Macron was due to speak Sunday in front of the German parliament at the annual commemoration of the victims of war and dictatorship, a week after the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War, then consult Merkel on European and international issues.
Merkel echoed Macron's appeal in an interview with the European army last week, a long-term perspective that drew tweet's critics of Macron by Trump. In fact, Macron advocated that Europe do more for its own sake, putting it on the same level in many ways with Trump. At another point in the interview, Macron discussed hacking and other cyber threats and said that on this front, France had to protect itself from China, Russia and even the United States. -United. Her concern about US hackers had nothing to do with threats or military forces, yet she had drawn an angry tweet from Trump.
