The Franco-German relationship has long been heralded as the cornerstone of European integration, including in the realm of security and defense. It seems to experience many difficulties since 2022 and the beginning of the war in Ukraine. Evidently, this relationship has long been punctuated by impactful misunderstandings that hindered cohesive approaches to European defense strategies. This paper seeks to uncover the origins of these divergences, tracing their roots from the immediate post-World War II period to the aftermath of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Drawing on a multidisciplinary framework that incorporates historical analysis and political sociology, this paper examines how differing historical experiences, strategic cultures, and national priorities shaped the defense policies of France and Germany in the past decades. Key moments of divergence, including debates over NATO, nuclear deterrence, and European military integration, will be highlighted, to shed light on the structural and ideational factors that continue to impact their bilateral collaboration.

By offering a deeper understanding of the historical foundations of these misunderstandings, the paper furthermore aims to contribute to ongoing discussions about how France and Germany can strengthen their leadership in European defense amidst contemporary challenges, such as the war in Ukraine, and shifting transatlantic dynamics with the return of Donald Trump to power in January of 2024.

The European Union Battlegroups (EUBG), established in 2004 as the EU's rapid reaction force and now largely overlooked, hold the notable distinction of never having been deployed. A common explanation for this inactivity points to their overly diverse composition (some groups including five or six nations) and the EU’s unanimity requirement for decisions within the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP).

While appealing, this explanation—that the number of contributors and unanimity requirements hinder deployment—fails to hold up under scrutiny. If fewer contributing nations or majority voting could resolve these challenges, how can we explain the underutilization of the Franco-German Brigade (FGB)? Comprised solely of French and German units, and requiring agreement only between Paris and Berlin, the FGB has seen minimal action since its creation over 30 years ago, with Afghanistan in 2009 being its sole significant deployment attempt. This case exemplifies the persistent failure of European nations to utilize pre-established multinational forces, even when structural obstacles seem absent.

This article aims to analyze the 2009 Afghanistan deployment attempt, focusing on the attitudes and positions of French and German political-military actors, to draw lessons for contemporary EU defense projects. To do so, it applies a framework combining Kal Holsti’s role theory and decision-making analysis. Research and interviews suggest that decisions were shaped by the roles actors ascribed to their nations, though power dynamics and institutional arrangements also played a role.

Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has radically changed the security environment in Europe resulting in a so-called return of geopolitics. Labelled as “geopolitical awakening” by the former High Representative of the EU, geopolitics has become subject of public discourses in the EU. Therefore, “geopolitical Europe” is widely seen as a new normal of EU foreign policy. Whether the EU should act as a security provider for its member states, is controversially debated, while the EU’s intergovernmental Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) raises doubts about the Union’s capabilities to do so. Mainly because the Franco-German engine, which in the past was regarded as the driving force behind European integration, and in particular the further development of CSDP, has now come to a serious standstill. Little progress has been achieved since the Russian large-scale attack on Ukraine. Among the reasons for this are not least the massive domestic political crises and unstable governments in both countries.

The paper examines how the frequently proclaimed return of geopolitics to public discourse is visible in the election campaign communication in France and Germany since 2022. It covers national elections in France in 2022 and in Germany in 2025 as well as the 2024 European elections in both countries by analysing the campaigns of all parties, which were elected to parliament in each election. Therefore, the election programmes are analysed following the approach of Blended Reading. This method combines algorithm-based quantitative data analysis (Distant Reading) to structure the text data with qualitative methods like content analysis to contextualise the results (Close Reading). Divergences or convergences in the parties’ positions are considered an indicator for developments in public opinion on geopolitics in France and Germany. Based on this, conclusions will be drawn about the extent to which the party positions affect the capacity of the Franco-German engine for further European integration in the field of CSDP.

In a world characterised by the return of conventional warfare to the European continent since February 2022, while both the French and German heads of state use the term ‘war economy’ over and over again (associated with the notion of ‘changing times’ in Berlin), Paris and Berlin do not seem to make the same use of it when it comes to translating it into financial resources. While the war in Ukraine has prompted the creation of European instruments to finance the acquisition of military capabilities (in particular instruments such as EDIRPA and ASAP), this development of a European framework seems for the moment to be far from translating into real coordination between European states on budgetary and capability issues. A comparative analysis of the French and German cases sheds some interesting light on this point. How have France and Germany come to grips with the notion of a ‘war economy’ on the one hand and the Zeitenwende on the other? Is it possible to identify a convergence of these resources at European level, over and above the national variations? To answer this question, the paper uses an approach inspired by discursive institutionalism to analyse the strategic discourse developed by French and German government players since February 2022 on the question of the financial resources and military capabilities required in this strategic context. More specifically, this paper aims to propose an analysis of French and German strategic discourses around the notions of war economy and Zeitenwende in order to better understand how these concepts are embodied in more or less divergent concrete measures in terms of budgetary capacities mobilised for defence in the two States. The advantage of discursive institutionalism is that, in addition to analysing the discourses produced, it is possible to explore the framework in which they are produced in order to shed more light on their mechanisms. From an empirical point of view, this paper is based, in addition to the analysis of the strategic discourses and documents already mentioned, on a field survey based on twenty-five qualitative interviews conducted in 2022-2023 with military and diplomatic practitioners and French and German experts. The paper begins by comparing the way in which Paris and Berlin conceive the ‘war economy’ and apply it in practice, before examining how the two states position themselves in relation to the instruments developed at European level to embody this notion.