Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Emmanuel Macron of France met in Berlin on Friday looking to smooth over their differences on how to support Ukraine in its war with Russia and allay concerns that the Franco-German “engine of Europe” is sputtering.
Mr. Scholz hosted Mr. Macron alongside Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, as Europe struggles to maintain unity at a critical moment, with U.S. support for Kyiv in question and Russian forces having made gains on the battlefield.
In recent weeks, the differences between the allies have become unusually public and bitter, even as all agree that support for Ukraine is crucial to preventing further Russian aggression in Europe.
Mr. Macron, eager to stake out a tougher stance toward President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, chided allies not to be “cowards” after they strongly rebuffed his suggestion that NATO countries should not rule out putting troops in Ukraine. From being Europe’s dove on Russia, the French leader, feeling humiliated over his initial outreach to Mr. Putin, has been transformed over the past two years into its hawk.
The way he has made the switch has rankled some allies. Mr. Macron’s remark was interpreted as a jab at Mr. Scholz’s government, which in turn retorted that Mr. Macron ought to put up more money or weapons to back his words.
Mr. Scholz, who has made Germany the largest military supporter of Ukraine after Washington, feels he has offered the material backing necessary and is resistant to doing more. But to the chagrin of even his own coalition partners, he has drawn a line against sending long-range Taurus missiles.
Mr. Macron, in a television interview Thursday night, doubled down on the ideas he had thrown out earlier, telling TF1 and France 2 television, that “strategic ambiguity” about how far NATO allies would go to support Ukraine was necessary to keep the Kremlin guessing.
“If, faced with someone who has no limits, faced with someone who crossed every limit that he had given us, we tell him naïvely that we won’t go any further than this or that — at that moment, we are not deciding peace, we are already deciding defeat,” he said.
“If Russia wins this war, Europe’s credibility will be reduced to zero,” Mr. Macron added. “Do you think that the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Estonians, the Romanians, the Bulgarians could stay in peace even for a second?”
French and German officials privately acknowledge there is a serious clash between the two leaders — one that reflects not just very different personal styles, but stark differences in their approach toward European security.
Those close to Mr. Scholz say that Mr. Macron fails to see that Germany cannot play with strategic ambiguity as France can: Germany has no nuclear weapons, and is dependent on NATO for its nuclear umbrella.
Mr. Macron will most likely receive backing for his more robust posturing when he and Mr. Scholz are joined later on Friday by Mr. Tusk.
Earlier this week, Mr. Tusk said it fell to Paris, Berlin and Warsaw to “mobilize all of Europe” and to provide more support for Ukraine.
The trilateral talks are a revival of the so-called “Weimar Triangle,” the 1990s-era talks between France, Germany, and Poland to draw eastern European states closer to the European Union and NATO. After lying dormant for years, officials returned to the format in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
This round of talks takes place amid stalled negotiations in the United States. With a $60 billion aid package blocked by Republicans in Congress, President Joe Biden announced a $300 million package for weapons to Ukraine in a stopgap measure that Army accountants cobbled together from savings made from contracts that came in under bid.
Ukraine is desperate for weapons to fend off Russian advances, particularly ammunition and air defenses. Yet Europe is struggling to come up with more cash for supplies. European Union leaders on Wednesday announced a 5 billion euro, or $5.5 billion, fund for arms deliveries, but the deal allows E.U. partners to discount shipments they have already provided directly to Ukraine.
In Germany, a growing number of lawmakers are pushing for deliveries of Germany’s Taurus missiles despite Mr. Scholz’s adamant refusals. The opposition Christian Democrats put the matter to a vote in Parliament on Thursday — a largely symbolic move because the two coalition partners to Mr. Scholz’s Social Democrats, the Greens and the Free Democrats, did not support it.
Nonetheless, the two partners have been increasingly vocal in their disagreement with the chancellor over Taurus missiles, and the debate sparked on the Parliament floor reflected growing concerns among Ukraine supporters about hesitancy in Berlin.
The divide within Germany appears to be worsening as members of the Social Democrats, who before the war were seen as being close to Russia, made arguments that sounded like an incremental retreat to their pacifist positions before the war.
Speaking in Parliament on Thursday, the head of the Social Democrats’ parliamentary faction, Ralf Mützenich, asked: “Is it not time to start thinking, not about how to conduct a war, but how to freeze this conflict and later end it?”
Norbert Röttgen, a Christian Democrat, called it an “unbelievable” proposal, writing on the social media platform, X, that it suggested the chancellor’s party was “abandoning its goal of bringing Putin’s war to an end.”
The debate in Germany on Thursday seemed jarringly far removed from Mr. Macron’s comments that same day, as he told interviewers that “peace is not Ukraine’s capitulation.”
Yet he stopped short of previous comments last month calling for Russia’s defeat, instead using Mr. Scholz’s refrain that Russia “cannot win this war.”
It was perhaps meant as a conciliatory gesture toward the chancellor, who has also tried to dial down the tensions. Earlier this week he told journalists that he had a “very friendly” relationship with Mr. Macron. “It is different than what many people think.”
The centrality of the Franco-German relationship to propelling Europe through the war, and indeed to the whole project of ever greater European integration, will put heavy pressure on the two leaders to paper over their differences and make the best of things in Berlin.
Yet the true test will not be the statements of friendship they formulate, but whether they can provide concrete plans for more support, Mr. Tusk warned. “True solidarity with Ukraine?” he wrote on X, just hours before the meetings: “Less words, more ammunition.”
