Macron's war-mongering talk is unnerving Europe

Relations between German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron have always been strained but they’re now positively hostile. Media on both sides of the Rhine have laid bare the differences that exist between the two men. Der Spiegel calls it a ‘battle of egos’, while Bild recently ran an article headlined ‘The Dangerous Ice Age’.

Analysing the reason for the glacial relationship that exists between Macron and Scholz, Bild highlighted their different natures: Scholz was ‘stiff, often hesitant, but in the end mostly true to his word’, and a leader who had more faith in the Americans and the British than his EU partners. Macron, on the other hand, is an ‘instinctive president who loves the grand gesture more than the small print’. The paper mocked the Frenchman’s vanity, posing topless on a luxury yacht in the Mediterranean, so different from Scholz, whose idea of a good time is hiking in the Bavarian Alps.