Peter Strobel always found the French his fussiest customers. Not any more, reports the Financial Times.
The German runs a sausage-making business within a few kilometres of the French border and gets about 40 per cent of sales from France. With the neighbouring economy struggling, he says his cross-border clients are having to make unexpected compromises. “French people will save last on food. But now they are going for cheaper things,” says Mr Strobel, whose 70-strong Franco-German workforce is confronted daily with glaring cross-border economic disparities.
“On the German side, we cannot get enough workers or trainees. On the French side there is unemployment,” he says. Mr Strobel is a witness to a key German concern about the French presidential election: the divergent economic fortunes of the two countries — and whether anything will change after the vote.
As Berlin’s most important political and economic partner heads for its most important election in years, chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is worried about the result and its bearing on Germany’s own international role. A win for Marine Le Pen, the National Front’s populist leader who seems almost guaranteed to be one of the candidates in France’s run-off in May, remains the most critical challenge for Germany.
But even if the centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron wins, as polls suggest is more likely, Berlin is not sure that he can pull France out of its political and economic malaise.
Josef Janning, head of the Berlin office of ECFR, a think-tank, says: “People here are worried, and not just over a possible Le Pen victory. They are worried because they are not sure that even with Macron France’s domestic problems will be solved.”
Berlin’s need for a stronger France is clear. German officials argue that they otherwise lack an equal EU partner capable of tackling problems ranging from migration to unemployment. When Berlin goes it alone, it is often accused of bullying: critics still occasionally make ugly comparisons with Nazi-era dominance.
“Especially after Brexit, Germany needs France so it is not portrayed as a hegemon,” says Henrik Enderlein, head of the Delors Institute, a Berlin think-tank.