A joint Council of Ministers at the Elysée Palace, a joint press conference… This Sunday was dedicated by Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron to the celebration of the Franco-German couple. The two leaders announced several measures meant to boost the ties of the two nations.
60 years after the signing of the Elysée Treaty, it was a question this Sunday for the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, to display the understanding of their two nations and to present avenues to strengthen the ties between them.
This Sunday, French and German ministers first mingled at the Elysée for a common Council of Ministers. After this meeting, the head of the German government, Olaf Scholz, and Emmanuel Macron gave a press conference.
If the exchanges essentially revolved around international news, the Ukrainian question, as well as the opposition raised by the pension reform project among many French people, the two men nevertheless presented several devices supposed to animate Franco friendship. -German. With a flagship measure: the issuance of free train tickets for young Germans and French.
Deutsche Bahn and SNCF united in this project
France and Germany will thus institute this “binational ticket” in the summer for young people, 60,000 copies of which will be free. The idea being to “encourage train travel within the two countries”, according to the terms used by the two leaders. The terms of the provision of these tickets must still be specified, however, warned the French and German Ministers of Transport, Clément Beaune and Volker Missing, in a joint press release.
On the other hand, we know that the two States have promised a financial participation in this system which will associate the SNCF with the Deutsche Bahn (DB). In addition, Paris and Berlin say they “support” the development in 2024 of a direct high-speed rail link between Berlin and Paris as well as a night train connecting the two European capitals.
Strengthen the learning of the neighbor’s language
Emmanuel Macron then moved away from the rail to detail the rest of the roadmap envisaged to boost cooperation and harmony between neighbors from one bank of the Rhine to the other.
“We had a quick exchange with the first promotion of our Franco-German program for young talents, led by the Franco-German Office for Youth which, in almost 60 years of existence, will have enabled nearly 10 million mobility between our two countries,” he said.
“We will step up our efforts to learn our respective languages,” he further pledged.
