60 years of French-German friendship: Op-ed
Hervé Magro, Jurgen Schulz
On Jan. 22, we are celebrating 60 years of French-German friendship! On this day in 1963, then-French President Charles de Gaulle and German chancellor Konrad Adenauer signed the Élysée treaty. This treaty marks reconciliation between our two countries, after centuries of enmity and just 18 years after the end of World War II. With this treaty, we did not only officially declare friendship between our countries and the democratic values that we share, but also founded structures to further strengthen people-to-people contacts with an important focus on youth exchange and to coordinate our foreign, European and security policy by means of regular consultations. In 2019, the Aix-la-Chapelle-Aachen treaty further complemented that endeavor. The strong bilateral bond between our countries has also been a driving force for European integration.
Germany and France are also taking initiatives for shaping EU relations with Türkiye – a candidate country anchored to the EU by an association agreement since 1964 and a customs union since 1995. High-level dialogues within the ongoing positive agenda on topics including climate, migration, anti-terrorism, health and agriculture, are set to explore and strengthen fields of cooperation and the participation of Türkiye in EU programs such as Erasmus.
Almost 80 years after the end of World War II, war has returned to Europe with the Russian aggression against Ukraine. Again, Franco-German consultation has been crucial for coordinating, together with EU institutions, a common European response to support Ukraine, in close coordination with NATO allies, and to adopt EU sanctions against Russia. Together with our partners and allies, we made clear that this breach of international law cannot be accepted. Türkiye plays an important role in this regard.
Other global challenges that have become more and more urgent in recent years are the worldwide climate and environmental crises, which affect Germany and France just as much as Türkiye. It is clear that those crises do not stop at national boarders, and neither can our efforts to fight them. Franco-German cooperation serves as a global driver for sustainability and climate action with many concrete joint initiatives. To support climate action in Türkiye, Germany and France together with the World Bank and the United Nations are part of a multilateral Memorandum of Understanding that serves as a framework to provide financing of over 3 billion USD for Türkiye’s green transition.
A crucial step in countering the devastating impacts climate change already has, is the commitment reached at COP27 to renewable energies. Nevertheless, the gap to limiting the world’s temperature increase to 1.5 degrees is still wide open. With its net-zero goal for the year 2053, Türkiye plays an important role in contributing to that effort. Interconnected with climate change is the loss of biodiversity. The last COP on biodiversity was a great success, as Türkiye, France, and Germany together with almost 200 countries decided to protect at least 30 percent of the planet’s land and water areas by 2030 and to substantially increase financing dedicated to preserving nature. This is a great starting point for the COP16, which will take place in Türkiye.
Six decades later, the Élysée treaty still is at the core of Franco-German peace efforts. The friendship between our countries grows with the challenges ahead, and is and ought to be filled with concrete actions and works as an example of how bilateral reconciliation and cooperation, based on shared democratic values, can become beneficial for the wider region. It is with this spirit that we aim to pursue the cooperation with Türkiye, in the following years.
* Hervé Magro is the French Ambassador to Türkiye. Jurgen Schulz is the German Ambassador to Türkiye
