The meetings between Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel have multiplied in recent weeks full of summits – only in the past five days have they seen each other at the G-20 in Rome and at COP26 in Glasgow – and the German Chancellor has accumulated the tributes and farewells after 16 years at the helm of the European motor. The two also held a business dinner in Paris in September. And it is most likely that, until the new government is formalized in Germany, the French president will again run into an official international or bilateral act with the acting German head of government. Despite this, Macron, who has always shown a special relationship with Merkel, wanted to offer her a adieu more personal, with an invitation extended to the Chancellor’s husband, Joachim Sauer, to an evening that, beyond protocol, was full of personal winks.
To begin with, the place: Beaune, a fortified city surrounded by vineyards in the heart of Burgundy – it is known as the capital of Burgundy wines – which almost three decades ago was the scene of another German-French meeting of importance: the meeting in 1993 between Merkel’s mentor, Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and French President François Mitterrand.
The Macron program – the first lady, Brigitte, also participated – and the Merkel-Sauer began with a walk through the cobbled streets of this city and its medieval monuments, including the Hôtel-Dieu or Hospice de Beaune, the highest expression of the Golden age of the Duchy of Burgundy. They also entered a bookstore and a wine store. “Angela, Angela, bravo!” Shouted the citizens who took to the streets to say goodbye to the German woman. “Welcome to Beaune, dear Angela,” Macron tweeted. “Frankreich liebt dich!” (France loves you!), He added in German. Beaune is a “splendid place where you can really discover France beyond Paris, because there is not only Paris,” said a smiling Merkel to the press.
The soiree It continued at the Château du Clos de Vougeot, a 12th-century palace built by the monks of the Cîteaux abbey in the middle of vineyards and which gives its name to one of the region’s appellations of origin. After a recital by the pianist Alexandre Kantorow, Macron decorated Merkel with the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, as a sign of the “solidity of Franco-German friendship” that Merkel embodies through her relationship with successive French heads of state. since coming to power in 2005, the Elysee said. Macron is the fourth French president Merkel has dealt with. Before her, her predecessors Konrad Adenauer, Willy Brandt, Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schroeder also received this exclusive award. “France has learned to know you and love you,” he told her, handing him the high insignia.
But perhaps to a woman who is so fond of wine, chocolate and cheese, as her French biographer Marion Van Renterghem affirms, what she was most excited about is that both she and her husband have been invited to the Guild of the Knights of Tastevin , which since its creation in 1934 “celebrates the Burgundy region, its traditional cuisine, its wines and its customs and traditions”, according to the Elysee. And the dinner, already totally in private, that the two couples enjoyed and in which there was no shortage of cheeses, chocolates and, of course, wine.
The visit to Beaune “closes years of fruitful work between the president and the chancellor to reinforce bilateral cooperation (…) and contribute to the European project,” the Elysee said in a statement. The invitation is a sample of the “close relations between Germany and France”, agreed from Berlin a spokeswoman for the German Government.
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Although they have not always been fully aligned, both from Berlin and from Paris the strong bond that unites the two countries has always been underlined, especially in the European framework that both defend. Berlin was Emmanuel Macron’s first visit after being sworn in as president in 2017, where he had also been as a candidate, as was his then main rival, the conservative François Fillon. Four years later, the pilgrimage was reversed: it was two of the German candidates to succeed Merkel, the also Christian Democrat Armin Laschet and the Social Democrat and most likely Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who traveled to Paris in the middle of the German campaign last September.
The president, for his part, has received Merkel multiple times, who in the summer of 2020 also became the first German chancellor in 35 years to visit Fort Brégançon, the summer residence of French presidents. In return, Macron became the first foreign leader invited to Berlin last June after the worst of the coronavirus pandemic.
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