WARSAW — Germany’s new Chancellor Friedrich Merz kicked off his term with lightning trips to Paris and Warsaw on Wednesday, aiming to revive the long-dormant Weimar Triangle alliance. It’s clear which of the two is Merz’s priority.
Fresh from an embarrassing false start to his tenure as chancellor on Tuesday, Merz promised a joint defence council with France’s President Emmanuel Macron. In comparison, he issued only a vague commitment to build out railway links to Poland during the second, late afternoon leg of a whistle-stop tour.
“It was important to me to be on the same day first in Paris and then in Warsaw,” Merz said in a joint media stint with Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
The three-decade-old trilateral alliance known as the Weimar Triangle has long been a coordination body between Germany’s two big neighbours named after the eponymous city. But it’s become defunct over recent years as tensions flared between the two governments in Warsaw and Berlin.
For months, Merz has pledged to work on mending ties with Germany’s eastern neighbour. Under his predecessor, Olaf Scholz, relations soured over everything from energy supply to wartime reparations.
Despite the symbolic importance of a trip to Warsaw on his first day in office, there was little sign Merz wants to make breakthrough in the Polish capital.
On the right track
For his part, Merz promised the rapid construction of a monument to the victims of Nazi aggression in Berlin, along with faster railway connections.
The new German government “just said in the coalition agreement that we want to expand the infrastructure to the east in exactly the same way as the infrastructure to the west,” Merz said.
Rail travel time between Berlin and Warsaw is around six hours for a 600-kilometre trip, and boosting transport infrastructure is a priority for both countries, and for NATO’s military mobility.
“I am glad that five minutes were enough for us today to tell each other that high-speed rail should connect our countries and, more broadly, Europe,” Tusk said.
Fresh from meeting Merz, Tusk stressed that results for the Weimar Triangle have been meagre and often depended on the state of respective bilateral ties. “It’s time to end this,” he said, adding both sides would aim to tighten cooperation on security, infrastructure, and also include the United Kingdom in a four-way partnership.
“I am convinced – as a veteran of these Polish-German-French works – that the future of Europe really depends to a large extent on how this Weimar Triangle will work,” said Tusk.
Migration, the sore point
Warm words didn’t mask lines of conflict, though, as the love fest in Warsaw soured slightly once the conversation moved to migration. Border controls on the Polish-German frontier have been in force since October 2023 and have been a point of contention ever since between the two governments.
Merz said Germany would work with Poland on a solution towards “the common goal to drastically lower irregular migration.”
While both agreed they see protecting Poland’s borders with Belarus and Russia as a common task, Tusk was sure to underscore that “the entire burden of responsibility for protecting this border” rests on Warsaw.
Another point of contention is that Tusk’s government has asked Berlin to extend the deployment of a Patriot air defence system which is protecting Rzeszów airport – a key Polish logistics hub used to shuttle aid to Ukraine – until the end of the year.
(jp)