FRENCH PRESIDENT Nicolas Sarkozy has dropped plans to invite German chancellor Angela Merkel to join him at an election rally this spring.
Dr Merkel’s CDU party said in January she would make joint campaign appearances with Mr Sarkozy as he fought for re-election, but the idea drew a cool response from some of the president’s allies and was seized on by his opponents as proof that he was struggling.
Asked on French radio yesterday whether he still expected to meet Dr Merkel ahead of the election, Mr Sarkozy said “without doubt at one moment or another.
“I don’t think at a rally, because the election campaign is a French matter between ourselves, but rather to speak about Europe,” he said.
Dr Merkel endorsed Mr Sarkozy during a joint television interview last month, shortly before the president formally announced his re-election bid.
She described it as “normal” to support a fellow conservative leader and has refused to receive his socialist rival, François Hollande, in Berlin during the campaign. The decision to shun Mr Hollande, breaking a convention where French and German leaders receive candidates from the neighbouring country, is partly due to her irritation over his call for renegotiation of the EU fiscal treaty.
The socialist wants to add clauses on growth and solidarity to the treaty, and has brushed off reports that conservative European leaders are shunning him because of this.
Commenting on Dr Merkel’s support for the president, Mr Hollande said: “If Mrs Merkel wants to campaign for Mr Sarkozy, she is perfectly within her rights. It’s a tough task she has set herself, because it’s not easy to convince the French.”
The socialist candidate, who opinion polls say retains a lead over Mr Sarkozy in a hypothetical run-off between the pair, struck a defiant note on his European policy this week, dismissing concerns that he would face opposition from other capitals.
“A newly elected president with a full term in office clearly carries more weight than a president at the end of his term,” he told the German magazine Der Spiegel.
“If the French people affirm my position, which I have stated clearly, the other countries will have to pay attention to it. For this reason, I wanted to send a very early warning to the other leaders. They’ll have to listen to me.”
Mr Hollande said he did not want to “tear up the entire pact” but wanted a clause on growth to be written into it. He also reiterated his call for jointly issued eurobonds, which Dr Merkel has strongly resisted.
The socialist reaffirmed his commitment to Europe but said he was against the idea of a Franco-German directorate imposing decisions on fellow EU member states.
“I’m not a lukewarm European,” he said. “I know that the German-French friendship is indispensable, no matter who the countries’ leaders are. But we cannot create the impression that there is a duopoly in Europe that everyone else must follow. Many countries can’t accept this – not the fact that there is a leadership, but that decisions are imposed on them.”
