On the day, exactly 56 years after the signing of the Elysée Treaty, President Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel put on this Tuesday in Aachen your signature under a new German-French Treaty. The institutional reason, the Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer had laid, want to expand your followers and strengths. The 1963 sealed cooperation was motivated by the will to reconciliation, the renewed partnership takes on the diverse challenges of the 21st century. Century: These challenges are to cope with the two countries together, on a ‘higher’ level cooperation, for the benefit of the Germans and the French (and European partners). So anyway the governments before that.

That France and Germany are moving even closer together (want), from the Outside – and Europe – to the social and economic policy, is the consequence of the pull of Paris and Berlin, from the dramatic changes in the world, in Europe and in its neighbourhood. The international order is taken from two sides: from authoritarian ascenders, such as China and, more recently, from Western power. The cohesion of the EU is threatened from the inside and from the outside, a new nationalism is increasingly followers. In Europe’s periphery, the devil is certainly in the true sense of the word: war, Chaos, disintegrate(d)e States and great migration pressure. At the same time, technical progress in an unprecedented pace is progressing.

That you can’t sit there bearing in mind the recent experience of Crisis simply goes without saying. Security and prosperity of the two key European countries and their partners are not God-given. A new cold “the wind of change blows against” you must set better.

the date of the signing of the new Treaty is a tribute to the history. But there is also a coincidence, which gives the project additional meaning: Two days before the 22. January has begun the third year of Donald Trumps. The American President has left for the Europeans and the EU is not much; the value of the community of the West, he has not understood until today. A week later, the voting for the lower house in London, once again, about how the UK leaves the EU. Uncertainties and uncertainties everywhere.