Macron and Scholz to try to mend differences in Paris lunch meeting
Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz will meet in Paris on Wednesday in a bid to quell rumours that the Franco-German engine is spluttering.
The working lunch between the French President and the German Chancellor is in lieu of a cancelled ministerial meeting, initially scheduled for this week but now postponed to January.
The meeting typically is held annually but hasn't taken place in person since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Officially, the reason for the postponement of the meeting is that several German ministers are unavailable due to school holidays.
But difficulties in finding common grounds on a host of topics including how to best tackle skyrocketing energy prices as well as defence loom large.
The two leaders are now not expected to hold a joint press conference after their meeting. Berlin initially said the two leaders would face reporters together after their meeting only for Paris to refute it later.
Both Macron and Scholz sought to downplay their differences as EU leaders gathered in Brussels last week for a summit to discuss ways to curb energy prices.
"We don't always have the same positions, which is normal, and we are at a key moment when many things are being revisited in our Europe on energy, defence and the economy," Macron told reporters on Thursday.
"All this requires hard work. But as I have always said to you, I think that European unity is key in this period and that is what we are working on," he added.
Scholz’s spokesman, Steffen Hebestreit, meanwhile said that "there are a whole series of different topics that are currently occupying us. I don’t know whether there are snags but it’s not yet the case that we’ve reached a united stance."
On energy, both countries agree with proposals from the European
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