'Without France, Germany is on its own in Europe'

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls' visit to Germany this Monday won't be an easy one given that Franco-German relations are strained to say the least. Ulrike Guerot calls for more understanding from Berlin.

DW: French President Francois Hollande has rejected further austerity measures and wants more time to implement reforms. Franco-German relations, it seems, are more about differences than common ground these days. Why is that?

Ulrike Guerot: If you look at it from a historic point of view the relationship wasn't always easy. We sometimes have a romanticized vision of, say, the 1990s when we said "we did the euro thing together," but if you look more closely, there has always been fierce competition.

At the moment, we are simply seeing very different developments in Germany and France, especially economically speaking. Germany has been able to be an integral part of the global market in the last few years, which has enabled it to implement reforms, bring its economy up to speed and reinvent itself politically, too. That didn't happen in France. So, you can reprimand them for that or not - at any rate, it's tearing the Franco-German relationship apart.

Ulrike Guerot is a political scientist at the Open Society Initiative for Europe (OSIFE)

When Prime Minister Manuel Valls meets German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday, will it be a clash of two very different financial and economic concepts, too?

Yes and no. Since Hollande came to power in April 2012 France has been muddling through. The president has been focused on the Socialists' left wing and also the Greens.

But nominating Valls - already his third prime minister - is a signal that France is clearly ready for change. And Valls can achieve that - he doesn't have any designs on the top job in the 2017 presidential elections, so he could afford to push through the deep, but necessary, cuts to pensions, health care and the overall budget.

Because so far, all the reform efforts have been half-hearted. France has managed to put off steps already taken by countries such as Portugal, Greece and Italy - let alone Germany, which implemented its Agenda 2010 reforms more than 10 years ago.

Why do you think France is dragging its feet?

There is this saying that France has a revolution every once in a blue moon, but never any reforms. And that creates a backlog and when the pressure gets too high, people take to the streets. You can't compare France to Germany.

One reason is geography. We like to pretend that France can just copy the German model with its apprenticeship system and its backbone of medium-sized companies.

Well, I always tell people, if you drive from Dijon in the east to Bordeaux in the west, you basically have 500 kilometers (300 miles) worth of sunflower fields. In Germany, you'd have an exit to an industrial park every 20 kilometers. France just doesn't have those homogenous geographical and political structures, rather, it has a very strong divide between cities and rural areas.

So, when the German keep urging reforms, it comes across as very arrogant sometimes. I have a lot of sympathy for that view - that you can't just foist the German system on France. And then there's this intense pressure from the right, from Marie Le Pen.

At the moment, France is like a sulking narcissist - it is at the western corner of the EU, so it feels left out of the whole eastern expansion trend, with its opportunities for export. France was on the winning side of World War II, but now its economy is doing so badly compared with Germany with its booming economy and substantial trade surplus. And a national football team that can beat Brazil 7-1 in the World Cup. The French have a massive problem with marginalization, and who can blame them, really?

France seems to be sliding from one domestic crisis to the next. Can Germany still rely on France as an international partner?

Well, name a country that isn't preoccupied with domestic issues at the moment - the UK with Scotland, Greece, Italy - there are quite a few. And the Germans don't always look beyond their borders either - look at the discussion on the proposed road tax.

France, for its part, is slowly realizing that it has become the lame duck of Europe and that the world is watching it closely. It's, of course, at the heart of Franco-German relations, and we in Germany can't afford for France to fall behind.

The last five years of the eurozone crisis have shown that we can't do Europe on our own. Even if we wanted to call the shots, it doesn't work if other countries revolt against the "German dictate."

We need the French. If they sulk and refuse to cooperate with the Germans, everything gets blocked. The two countries have to work in tandem, it's in Germany's interest. If France is not our partner anymore, we're on our own in Europe. Germany should think about that next time it casts a critical eye on France. I just wish Germany had more psychological empathy for France and its cultural, historical and political issues.

Ulrike Guerot is a political scientist at the Open Society Initiative for Europe (OSIFE), focusing on European democracy. Guerot's doctoral thesis was on the French Socialists. She has also worked for the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) and the German Marshall Fund.   dw de