Germany's Merz: Who are his international allies?
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has forged relations with Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer and Giorgia Meloni. With some he is surprisingly close. US President
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has forged relations with Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer and Giorgia Meloni. With some he is surprisingly close. US President Donald Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer are among Chancellor Friedrich Merz's closest foreign policy partners. Yet these relationships have evolved in very different ways — some far better, others worse than expected. Emmanuel Macron: unable to find common ground Few in Germany would have expected things to go poorly with Merz and Macron. At the beginning of June, FCAS — a German-French flagship project — collapsed. After nine years of negotiations, France and Germany ended their attempts to build a joint fighter aircraft as a successor to the Eurofighter. "Symbolically, the failure underscores that German-French cooperation, and the political will for closer defense integration between Europe's two largest military powers, have faltered," Linn Selle of the German Council on Foreign Relations told DW. "This is a very bad sign for European cooperation." While in opposition, Merz complained that his predecessor, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), had neglected relations with France and vowed to revive them. Yet, according to Linn Selle, little has come of that ambition: "Chancellor Merz began with strong engagement at the EU level and in German-French relations. In the meantime, however, German-French relations have cooled significantly." The two leaders' positions on trade and financial policy, as well as on planning for the EU budget, are often far apart. The end of the FCAS project was not even announced jointly; instead, Berlin surprised Paris with the move. Germany considers new fighter project after FCAS collapse To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Giorgia Meloni: The right-wing pragmatist For German politicians, relations with Italy are often overshadowed by ties with France.
In recent years, this has also had political reasons: when Giorgia Meloni became head of a right-wing coalition in Rome in 2022, Germany's center-left government at the time, kept its distance. Meloni's party, Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy), is variously described in Germany as far-right, post-fascist, or at least right-wing nationalist. It was widely seen as the Italian equivalent of Germany's Alternative for Germany (AfD) — a party with which most centrist parties wanted nothing to do. However, that changed with the start of Friedrich Merz's chancellorship in May 2025. The shift had less to do with Merz sharing Meloni's political positions than with her effectiveness as a pragmatic mediator, both in the tariff dispute between the EU and the US and in the conflict over Trump's ambitions in Greenland. Beyond efforts to resolve the crisis with Trump, however, the governments in Berlin and Rome appear to have more in common: they share a desire to promote greater competition and reduce bureaucracy within the EU. For Linn Selle, it is no coincidence that Merz and Meloni have found common ground: "Both share a rather pragmatic approach to European policy." Moreover, "Italy and Germany are very similar economically and politically: a relatively strong industrial base, an economic structure shaped by SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises), and a federal system of government. This shapes their view of the world and fosters a sense of closeness." Nonetheless, Selle considers it unlikely that Italy will ever assume a role for Germany comparable to that of France. The reason: "The German-French partnership possesses an institutionalized closeness and an intensity of exchange that Germany has with no other partner." Where do Europe's far-right parties differ? To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Donald Trump: flattery fails to forge a friendship Friedrich Merz has made considerable efforts to cultivate ties with US President Donald Trump.
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