We are not celebrating

Snowflakes dance in the light of the street lamps. The station square glitters a wintry white. The few passengers from the high-speed train who get off in Sedan trudge away in a hurry. The silence that spreads is almost solemn. For minutes there is not a soul in sight – no cars, no buses, no taxis.

Sedan wasn’t always such a quiet town. In the 1870-71 war Bismarck's troops overran the supposed French bastion of Sedan for the first time. Emperor Napoleon III, who had fled into the castle, hoisted the white flag. From that day on, the Germans celebrated 2 September as “Sedan Day”. During World War II, in May 1940, Hitler's armoured columns surprised the town from the north, and a month later France itself fell. Have the wounds of that era healed – now that France and Germany are celebrating 50 years of the Élysée Treaty, and 50 years of friendship? Is the city joining in the celebrations?

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Counterpoint

‘A unique tangle’

"Nothing without Germany" says French daily Libération in its leader article of January 22, the day of the treaty's 50th anniversary. "There is a fact that is sometimes hard to swallow in our little [French] theatre, but it is tenacious 50 years after the Elysée treaty, [...] France can do nothing or nearly nothing without the approval of its powerful German neighbour."

The paper praises this unique relationship –

With a mighty neighbouring state, no other country in the world has built such a sophisticated tangle of economic, trade, financial, political and even cultural relations that are as dense or as passionate.

Referring to France's military engagement in Mali, Libération highlights Germany's resistance "to the idea of assuming the responsibilities that its might demands" and notes that –

From the road map left by Adenauer and de Gaulle, everything has been done and more, except in one field: security policy. The general [de Gaulle] had nonetheless stated that if the two sides of the Rhine had nothing to say to each other in terms of defence, they ran the risk of one day having nothing to exchange. The Elysée treaty has not aged. But Germany still has a way to go.