French President Emmanuel Macron will travel to Berlin on Friday to meet with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to try to ease tensions between them over Ukraine that have surfaced in recent weeks, senior German and French officials told Politico. .ro. They will be joined later in the day by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, according to a German official, marking the first meeting since Tusk’s return as Polish prime minister in December of the “Weimar Triangle,” a format of dialogue between the three countries created in 1991.

The meeting was organized hastily, writes Reuters. Donald Tusk confirmed the tripartite meeting on Tuesday evening in an interview with the TVP Info news channel, given after a meeting in Washington with President Joe Biden.

“We talked with the president about how to mobilize our partners in Europe,” Tusk said. “The summit of the Weimar Triangle has been urgently called for Friday,” he said.

Scholz and Macron will first talk to each other before being joined by Tusk, a German government source said.

The meeting comes after tensions between the leaders of France and Germany over issues such as Ukrainian politics, most recently sparked by Macron not ruling out the deployment of ground troops in Ukraine.

Since the formation of the new Polish government at the end of last year, there has only been one meeting at the level of foreign ministers of the Weimar Triangle, but all three countries have expressed a desire to intensify relations.

Franco-German friction

The leaders intend for the meeting to be a demonstration of unity after a tense period when Franco-German confrontations over Ukraine turned into open hostility, writes Politico.

The long-standing tensions boiled over in late February when Macron refused to rule out sending Western troops to fight in Ukraine, vowing to do “whatever is necessary to ensure that Russia does not win this war.” The more cautious Scholl responded by ruling out sending ground troops from European countries.

A few days later, Macron appears to have responded directly to Scholz. “Europe is clearly facing a moment when it will be necessary not to be cowards,” he told the audience in Prague.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius responded that Macron’s statements were “something that doesn’t really help solve the problems we have when it comes to helping Ukraine.”

German officials privately complain that while Macron talks tough, French military support for Ukraine is not as great as Germany has offered.

Germany’s Kiel Institute, which collects national contributions to Ukraine’s war effort, puts France far behind with 640 million euros in military aid, compared to Germany, which has offered or pledged 17.7 billion euros.

The French dispute these figures and claim that they provide truly important weapons. “France has chosen operational efficiency in its military aid to Ukraine: promise what you can deliver, deliver what you can promise,” Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu recently said in a post on X.

What are the chances of reconciliation

Macron postponed a long-planned visit to Ukraine this week amid tensions with allies over his increasingly radical rhetoric. The Elysée Palace announced on Sunday that the visit would take place over the “next two weeks”.

The decision to delay it was made to allow time for talks with allies to get “tangible results” for Ukraine, a French diplomat told Politico.

Macron is expected to arrive at the chancellor’s office in Berlin around noon on Friday for a bilateral discussion with Scholz. Then, after the meeting between Macron and Scholz, there will be a tripartite discussion with Tusk. The leaders have tried to present the Weimar format as a means of strengthening European security, although it is not at all clear whether Tusk’s entry into the discussion will help ease the long-standing friction between Scholz and Markon, writes Politico.

Officials in Tusk’s government have been more sympathetic to Macron’s tougher rhetoric, with Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski recently saying a NATO troop presence in Ukraine was “impossible.”

A senior German official said no concrete decisions or statements are expected after Friday’s talks, which are only meant to send a new signal of unity.

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