Poland’s longstanding struggle for a bigger say in European leadership may finally be gaining ground with the revival of the long dormant Weimar Triangle – a diplomatic compact bringing Warsaw together with Germany and France in a regular dialogue on EU affairs.
When the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, joined the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, for a show of unity in Berlin last Friday, they breathed new political life into a format that has the unfulfilled potential to unite northern, southern and central Europe around a common agenda – especially in support of Ukraine.
The three leaders are coming from very different starting points. Poland is rushing to rearm itself and pouring assistance into Ukraine. Scholz is digging his heels in and refusing to give Kyiv Germany’s most potent long-range cruise missiles, while Macron has suddenly morphed into Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s most outspoken ally, even though Paris lags far behind Berlin in terms of the volume of its military aid.
Relations between France and Germany, long the EU’s leading couple, are as tense as they have been for ages, with domestic politics pulling them in opposite directions. The uber-cautious Scholz has to manage a fractious coalition including pacifists in his own Social Democratic party (SPD), while Macron’s new hawkishness is partly an attempt to wrong foot the rising hard-right opposition to his minority centrist government.
For the past decade, the Weimar Triangle has been more like the notorious Bermuda triangle of aviation fame – a void into which political initiatives episodically disappear without trace.
That was mainly because the previous Polish government, led by Jarosław Kaczyński’s conservative nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, spent its time feuding with Berlin and Paris on everything from the rule of law to arms contracts, the fight against the climate crisis, relations with Russia, and demands for second world war reparations.
There were earlier air pockets too, notably when the then French president Jacques Chirac reprimanded central European countries in 2003 by saying they had “missed a good opportunity to shut up” after they had signed a joint letter supporting the US-led invasion of Iraq. The Poles were long seen in Berlin and Paris as alarmist about Russia and too close to the US. With the benefit of hindsight, Macron acknowledged last year that France should have listened more to central Europe.
With a dynamic economy and a population of nearly 40 million, Poland is the largest and most influential central European state. Moreover, it is on its way to becoming a regional military power and a fortress against Russian aggression by spending more than 4% of its gross domestic product on defence. How Warsaw will pay for this arms bonanza remains to be seen.
Yet the country has punched below its weight in recent years because of Kaczyński’s obsession with picking fights with Berlin and Brussels for domestic political gain, and with playing off Washington against the EU.
Tusk, a former president of the European Council, is well positioned to play a greater role in EU leadership. He has the confidence of most of his central and eastern European peers, and is moving fast to mend Warsaw’s relations with Brussels and dismantle his predecessor’s capture of the judiciary and public media. He is also a trusted senior figure in the centre-right European People’s party, the EU’s dominant political family.
Whether Tusk is willing to join Berlin and Paris in their reform agenda for the EU, including taking more foreign policy decisions by majority vote instead of unanimity, is unclear. First he needs to consolidate his authority at home, defuse farmers’ protests over imports from Ukraine, and avert a comeback by PiS in local polls in April and European parliament elections in June. PiS would seize on any hint that Tusk’s centrist coalition was willing to yield Polish sovereignty by giving up a national veto on foreign policy and sanctions.
The Weimar Triangle was the brainchild of the former German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher. It was established in 1991 to embrace post-communist Poland and help prepare it for EU membership. Genscher’s vision was to seal reconciliation between reunited Germany and newly democratic Poland by drawing Warsaw into the central Franco-German relationship that was the motor of the EU at the time.
It never really worked, not least because the French were unenthusiastic about enlarging the EU to the east, sensing that their influence in Brussels would wane, while the Germans would bank the economic benefits. Having cast off communism, the Poles opted for shock therapy and a bare-knuckled form of capitalism rather than the dirigiste French version of social market economy. Fear of the “Polish plumber” – of eastern migrant workers undercutting western wages – was one reason why the French voted to reject an EU constitution in 2005.
Although French and German leaders and ministers have held regular Weimar format meetings with their Polish counterparts, the westerners were not receptive to Poland’s warnings of the looming threat from a revisionist Russia. Germany’s headlong pursuit of closer energy ties with Moscow, bypassing both Poland and Ukraine, was typical of that failure to listen.
Ironically, Tusk now finds himself having to soothe strained relations between Paris and Berlin, which have been squabbling publicly over their degree of commitment to Ukraine, as well as European defence procurement, nuclear energy and common EU borrowing, making it harder for the EU to take decisions at a time of acute geopolitical stress.
With US military aid to Ukraine blocked by partisan feuding in Congress, Europe’s leading powers urgently need to overcome differences over arming Kyiv. Scholz and Macron each gave some ground at Friday’s meeting, backing a Czech initiative to procure hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition from outside the EU, while European production is insufficient to meet Ukrainian needs.
Gently chiding both Paris and Berlin, Tusk said, “Ukraine needs less talk and more ammo.” The leaders did not take questions. The triple handshake was the political message.
Friday’s meeting did not resolve differences over Scholz’s refusal to give Kyiv potentially gamechanging Taurus long-range cruise missiles, nor over Macron’s assertion that sending western troops to Ukraine should not be ruled out. However, they agreed to meet again in the Weimar format after the June European elections, when each of the three may have a freer hand to make progress both on arming Ukraine and on EU reform.
The risk is that by then Ukraine’s strategic position will have deteriorated further, and hard-right Eurosceptic nationalists will have gained a louder voice in the European parliament to oppose both further aid to Kyiv and closer European integration.
Paul Taylor is a senior fellow of the Friends of Europe thinktank and author of the report After the war: how to keep Europe safe
