France and Germany this week mark the 40th anniversary of a relationshipwhich has shaped the evolution of modern Europe. Denis Staunton, in Brussels, examines how the Paris-Berlin axis has influenced the rest of the continent
The choice of Versailles as the venue for this week's celebration of Franco-German friendship could scarcely be more poignant or laden with historical significance.
It was here in 1871 that Bismarck proclaimed the birth of the German empire following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian war and it was in Versailles in 1919 that a defeated Germany was compelled to sign a treaty which most Germans saw as a national humiliation.
When all the members of Germany's Bundestag meet their counterparts from the French National Assembly in Versailles on Wednesday, they will mark the 40th anniversary of the Elysée Treaty, which institutionalised the modern relationship between the two states.
Agreed in 1963 between France's President Charles De Gaulle and Germany's Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, the treaty pledged both countries "to consult with each other, prior to any decision, on all questions of foreign policy . . . with a view to reaching an analogous position".
Although regular meetings between the French and German leaders began immediately after the treaty was signed, it was more than a decade before the alliance developed into the motor for European integration it has been ever since.
Germany's Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and France's President Valery Giscard d'Estaing formed a strong alliance to promote European unity, an alliance which Helmut Kohl and Francois Mitterrand sustained and developed.
The personal friendships between these two sets of leaders undoubtedly helped France and Germany to find agreement on the big issues facing Europe, particularly in the negotiations that led to the creation of economic and monetary union. However the strength and influence of the Franco-German relationship within the EU owes more to the fact that the two countries have such sharply different interests and such traditionally opposing approaches to European integration.
Germany has long favoured a federal model for Europe, based loosely on its own federal system, while France has championed a Europe dominated by intergovernmental negotiations between nation states. The two countries have championed different economic interests too, with Germany promoting help for industry while France has fought to preserve the EU's generous subsidies for farmers.
These fundamental differences of approach have made the Franco-German relationship a laboratory of compromise within the EU. If these two countries can agree on a deal, most other member-states can sign up to some agreement based on it.
Some commentators have blamed poor personal relations between Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and President Jacques Chirac for the stalling of the Franco-German motor between 1998 and last year. France's difficulty in projecting a single approach to Europe during the years of Mr Chirac's cohabitation with the Socialist prime minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, may have been a bigger problem.
Paris was further hampered by France's 10-year national sulk over German unification and misgivings over enlarging the EU to the east.
With cohabitation over and enlargement a done deal, Mr Chirac has moved to revive the Franco-German partnership. Mr Schröder's disappointed friendship with Britain's Mr Tony Blair made Berlin more receptive to Mr Chirac's advances, paving the way for last October's surprise deal on the future of farm subsidies.
This week's joint proposal on the future of Europe is a further sign that the old alliance is back on track and is likely to set the agenda for the final stage of the European Convention.
France and Germany have agreed that the Commission president should be given greater authority by being elected by the European Parliament and that the Commission should have greater power in economic and monetary affairs. They want a new president of the European Council to be chosen by EU leaders to organise the EU's political strategy and to represent the EU abroad.
An EU foreign minister would be a member of the Commission but would report to national governments in the Council of Ministers and would chair meetings of EU foreign ministers.
Member-states would lose their national veto on many foreign policy issues, although individual countries could still block proposals relating to security and defence.
Although the Franco-German proposals will be influential, they are unlikely to be accepted in their entirety. In the past, Franco-German deals before EU summits were often finessed into more acceptable compromises by the Commission president, acting in the interests of all member-states.
Mr Romano Prodi's weakness has meant that the Commission has a diminished role in such negotiations today but Mr Giscard, as the convention's chairman, is likely to propose significant modifications to the latest proposals.
The Commission has reacted sniffily to this week's proposals but most observers in Brussels agree that the revival of the Franco-German relationship will make it easier to do business in the EU. It bodes ill, however, for Mr Blair's ambition to make Britain a leader in Europe.
With the prospect of an early referendum in Britain on the euro receding, Mr Blair's enthusiastic support for Washington's policy on Iraq has left him further out of step with other EU leaders. Opinion- formers in Berlin and Paris now believe Britain has little to bring to the debate on Europe's future, apart from more demands that Europe's economy should liberalise.
A small high-level group in Brussels is preparing a detailed proposal for the future of the Franco-German relationship as the central alliance within the EU. Among its ideas for the future is that Paris and Berlin should indeed extend their axis into a triangle but that they should look to Warsaw rather than London as their new partner.
French, German and Polish foreign ministers have been meeting regularly since the early 1990s in an arrangement called the Weimar Triangle after the eastern German city where they first met.
It was in Weimar too, of course, that Germany established after the first World War the doomed republic which preceded the rise of Hitler's dictatorship. It seems that as Europe's key players seek to shape Europe's future, they can never quite escape the resonance of the continent's terrible past.