hey guys welcome back to foreign reacts today we'll be checking out another video related to
europe i think i do a lot of reaction videos that are related to europe but uh with that
being said i'm actually living in europe right now so that's really interesting we're actually
living in finland if you guys want to check out the finished vlogs that i'll be making over there
click the link in the comment section down below but either ways today we're going to be checking
out this video and it's titled who really leads the european union so obviously they're not going
to be pointing out an individual person has to be a selection based off of the country so
i'm guessing probably germany france uh italy spain the netherlands probably one of those
boys belgium would have been um the person who we're gonna get the victory uh uh handed
awarded to but um let's see what this video is all about and um subscribe and leave a
like on this video i really appreciate it and let's get into this with you guys
french president well the leaders of france and germany leaders of france germany russia
and ukraine the french and german leaders are meeting in paris trying yet again to contain the
debt crisis it's the story of reconciliation after three wars over the course of 70 years
of awkward photo ops and heavy symbolism and compromises and competing visions that have shaped
the european union france started a laboratory in europe it's a source of frustration at the
eu's unofficial leadership so what is the french german partnership and does it really lead europe
to understand this relationship we have to go back to the end of the second world war germany
looked like this there were four occupation zones splitting the country in its capital two countries
and coleridge starland a french protectorate under american pressure which was afraid germany
would fall to communism france which considered annexing silent for its coal opted instead of
reconciliation it made an offer to west germany to pool its own rich iron resources with german coal
italy the netherlands belgium and luxembourg student joined to found the european coal
and steel community world interest focuses on the k dos a as six european nations including
western germany meet for their first working session on the schumann plan for pooling steel
and coal in doing so france hoped war would not only be unthinkable but materially impossible
it marked the first step towards the european union but also turned a rivalry that had defined
europe into a partnership ten years later france and germany signed the mostly symbolic elysee
treaty which would promote closer ties to cultural exchange programs and regular bilateral meetings
it's around this relationship between two radically different countries
that the early european union would be built on one side a centralized partially
agricultural and protectionist france who saw itself as a great power and wanted to
assert its independence from both the us and the soviet union and on the other a federal
industrial and trading western germany who sought a close relationship with the united states
while keeping an open relationship with soviet republics and the soviet union
if you look at any of these big kind of division fault lines within the year around cooperation
you tend to find that france and germany come out on different sides and so what that means is
if you can get those two to agree then you've got the basis of a compromise within the eu
a certain number of key eu policies find their origin in french or german interests
like the common agriculture policy the euro or the single market but it was an unbalanced
while relationship is a nuclear power and has a seat in the u.n security council
germany was an economic powerhouse but whose sovereignty was limited through its occupation
and division and it's a status quo that rather satisfied france who then assumed that eu's
unofficial leadership french noble prize winner for literature pia moriak summarized the situation
by writing i love germany so much that i'm happy there too but then there was this that the wall
has suddenly become irrelevant the fall of the berlin wall and of the soviet union two years
later led to the reunification of germany and the withdrawal of french troops overnight germany's
population jumped from 63 to 80 million and it would open new economic opportunities
this would change the dynamic of the partnership and it would evolve in germany's favor long-term
economic trends saw france de-industrialized faster while german economic reforms in the
early 2000s allowed it to stay competitive these were compounded by the effects of deepening copy
i realized how interesting this video is like it's really interesting like i'm learning so
much that it's so unbelievable so practically right after you get it that straight up
this bond with germany and france it's due to the fact that they didn't want to go back to war
so the friendship was needed and what can i say seems as if it's it it has been working
economic integration which broke down trade barriers and increased french dependency
on german imports and with eu enlargement in the 2000s to countries where german not french
was taught as a second language the geographic and political center of the eu shifted towards germany
in an eu that focused first and foremost on economic affairs germany became the number
one country and france was relegated to second place but with german reluctance at leadership
and french weakness eu decision-making was paralyzed for nearly a decade there's actually
been a certain level of disappointment um from the um from the french side that germany isn't
driving that forward with france at the same time the weight of the two countries decreased
in 1957 they made up 62 of the eu's population versus 33 percent today and the leadership of
france and germany has been challenged by the eu's newest members who see it not as a tool
to find compromises but instead as a form of hegemony over european institutions so how
much influence do france and germany actually have when we look at french german influence we
can broadly divide it into three categories the first is legacy influence as founding members
germany and france have been able to shape the eu's laws and its policies to their benefits
which candidate countries have to adopt then there's size france and germany are simply large
countries whether it be in terms of population defense spending or economy where they account
for 41 percent of gdp and even 54 if we look at the eurozone under the eu's qualified majority
voting rules the two countries almost possess a blocking minority and then there is agenda setting
since 2003 joint cabinet meetings between french and german ministers allow for agenda setting
and choosing eu priorities this translates into a certain amount of privileges like the fact that
french and german are official languages of the european commission a certain amount of
flexibility with eu rules or the selection of the eu's leadership with some unfortunate consequences
for the eu and you can also see that in the types of figures that berlin and paris allow to go into
those leadership roles there's never any kind of real competition to sort of who the figureheads
of the eu on the global stage are but even more than these three aspects france and germany have
influenced the eu through their vision of either a block open on the world and ready to trade
or one that is sovereign and able to chart its own course germany's vandal dorsando
policy saw it push for trade agreements as a diplomatic tool to change authoritarian regimes
while francis pursued its own notion of strategic autonomy through the european union
but this influence also means the two countries also pursue a vision not entirely in line with
the rest of the eu for most member states uh the and on most different files the way of protecting
the national interest is often through the eu system there is a kind of an economies of scale
argument for pooling resources at the european level in order to be able to compete in a world
of continent-sized powers the challenge for france and germany is that the logic of that
argument becomes slightly less the bigger a power you are on any given field in your own right
to counterbalance their influence other countries have formed coalitions with
superhero sounding names like the new hanseatic league the frugal four or the visigrad group
frances also looked for alternatives like with the united kingdom when it was still part of the eu
or the formalization of its partnership with italy through the kikinal treaty
but these alternatives have not been a framework for resolving the eu's problems
the center of crisis resolution has been france and germany albeit with mixed results in the
financial crisis the stability pack kept the eurozone together but also pushed austerity on
southern europe the 2014 minsk agreement only delayed russia from invading ukraine and no
collective european solution was found for the migration crisis while the covet 19 pandemic saw
the eu issue common debt and put in place a 750 billion euro recovery package but the eu's latest
crisis has revealed deep flaws in both france and germany's views and visions of the world
in terms of trade relationship or great power politics russia has invaded
and targeted ukraine french president matthew mccon german chancellor olaf schultz spent about
75 minutes on the phone with vladimir putin today while they continued to advocate for dialogue with
russia the baltics in poland which were correct in their assessment of an expansionist russia
have had their vision and worldview validated and have taken a lead in pushing for sanctions
aid and weapon deliveries france and germany which have implemented sanctions
have been criticized for their slow approach and attempts to
pursue diplomacy and are now forced to reconsider their entire worldview
whereas france's skepticism about american reliability has been put into question and this
reveals the truly multipolar nature of the eu's leadership as a block driven not by countries but
by visions but that's not to say the french german partnership will disappear in a block governed by
coalitions of countries partnerships particularly between the eu's largest countries remain key
and in 2019 france and germany signed the achen treaty a mostly symbolic document continuing their
commitment to the partnership and reconciliation and when we consider the current agenda of reform
for the european union that relationship which remains an important form for dialogue decision
and compromise will have an important role to play but there maybe even more than before
other european countries will have a greater say
that's tough
that's tough i definitely definitely do believe that other european countries should have a say
in a lot of these things but um you know how it goes when you're the bigger guy or the bigger one
of the group you handle your business but to see just germany and france handling it so for so long
being so dominant that's really interesting and um it's kind of crazy that you don't hear a lot of
you know like rebuttals like okay this has to end right now stuff like that because that's really
what happens most of the time so congrats to them they did it for a good cause that's what i can say
right but um it's really unfortunate that um a lot of the visions supposedly
would likely be ignored in what i understood if it's not necessarily coming from france
in germany because they prioritize their vision what they think should be um done right now so
that's really interesting video i learned a lot from it and i hope you guys learned a lot
likewise but um i gotta get out of here guys so until next time peace