Franco-German relationship suffers growing rift

A journey on the Munich-to-Paris express train offered columnist John Lichfield a picture of a growing Franco-German rift. "The train was full until Karlsruhe. When it crossed the Rhine at Strasbourg it was empty. It then filled up again and, after Nancy, there was not an empty seat. In other words, the direct Munich-Paris express was not one train but two: a German train to the Rhine valley; a French train from Strasbourg to Paris. The train seemed to be a symbol of Franco-German relations, or lack of relations. Sixty-one years after the Second World War, after half a century of official friendship, the continental giants are living back-to-back lives. ... Chancellor Angela Merkel sees no point in cultivating a soon-to-vanish President Jacques Chirac. Privately, she says that she sees no point in the old Franco-German axis now that the fulcrum of the European Union has shifted to the east."

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