Differences of opinion between the two men abound.
Scholz has strong anti-nuclear and pacifist leanings, inherited from his formative years on the hard left of the Juso, the Socialist Youth, in the early 1980s.
He belonged to the “Better Red Than Dead/Atomkraft, nein danke” generation, which rejected nuclear power, civil or military. Germany has been phasing out power plants for years.
Macron, meanwhile, has advocated for a nuclear “renaissance”, promising to build up to 14 new nuclear reactors by 2050.
Scholz marched against the deployment of Pershing missiles in Germany, demanding Germany leave Nato. In 1984, as a Juso leader, he appeared on East German State television, with Egon Krenz, then East Germany’s leader. (Scholz has since mentioned his “detox” from extreme opinions.)
Macron, while initially reluctant to challenge Russia in Ukraine,
is today far more strident.
The two men have clashed in public on multiple occasions, always hastily arranging a photoshoot afterwards to insist they are actually on good terms.
Yet tensions are ratcheting up as the war in Ukraine drags on.
“Emmanuel Macron has made a spectacular two-year journey from apparent dove to leading hawk since February 2022,” says Mujtaba Rahman, the Europe Director for the Eurasia Group, a leading think tank.
The French president evolved “from would-be Putin intermediary to implacable Putin foe”. He has gone from saying “‘Don’t humiliate Russia’ (2022), to ‘Russia must be defeated’ (2023) to today’s war leader,” notes Rahma