PARIS -- France and Germany have solemnly celebrated the 40th anniversary of the so-called Elysee Treaty, signed by French President Charles de Gaulle and German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer on Jan. 22, 1963. Last month governments and parliaments in both Paris and Berlin held joint meetings, as French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder emphasized the closeness and warmth of their cooperation in most fields.
Nobody three months ago would have ventured to forecast such an outcome, for the Franco-German engine, once again, didn't seem to being work well. Ideologically, the conservative Chirac and liberal Schroeder looked far apart. Chirac had openly supported Schroeder's Christian Democratic challenger during the general election campaign in September.
The two capitals also were at odds over several important issues, such as the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy, the changes needed to adapt institutional structures to the enlargement of EU membership, and attitudes toward candidate countries from the former Soviet bloc as well as the two Mediterranean islands Cyprus and Malta.