Weimar Is Not Enough
The Weimar Triangle, the informal cooperation among France, Germany, and Poland, has sparked increasing interest and attention recently. In March 2024, the three countries’ leaders agreed on a list of priorities to aid Ukraine, with a focus on enhancing military support. Meetings among their ministers for foreign affairs, defense, and European affairs followed, the results of which include plans to hold joint military exercises in Poland later this year and an agenda for a “strong, geopolitical EU”. The latter was published before last year’s EU elections. Experts have celebrated these efforts and praised the grouping as “Europe’s new engine”.
A new impetus for the Weimar Triangle was long overdue. France, Germany, and Poland are key EU member states given their political weight, and they bring different perspectives and priorities to discussions. As Europeans urgently need to rethink political and strategic leadership in Europe, the trio offers options to coordinate policy in response to crises as a complement to other formats and institutions. Agreement among the three on any initiative can encourage other states to join them and thereby strike a broader European consensus. Dissonance among them, on the other hand, makes decision-making within EU institutions a near impossibility. This includes areas such as industrial policy, which has implications for security and defense.
Declarations made after Weimar meetings are full of ambitious but vague standard wording, especially when it comes to European security and defense, and the outcomes remain to be seen. As yet, there is no “Weimar roadmap” in which the Weimar countries commit to concrete steps to strengthen European security.
No matter how promising it is on paper, the format has evident limits. One reason why Weimar cooperation tends to fail has to do with differences in threat perceptions and interpretations of European and national security. Although French and Polish perceptions of the Russian threat are certainly more aligned today than before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the immediacy of the threat differs: while Poland regularly voices concerns about being the next target of a Russian attack, this is less likely for France or Germany. This also translates into policy: It would be extremely challenging to reintroduce conscription or sell massive cuts in social spending in favor of defense to the French or German publics, and policymakers in both countries have been reluctant to take these steps. In contrast, Poland spends almost 5% of its GDP on defense and aims for military training for large parts of the population.
A second reason for the failure of cooperation has to do with misunderstandings and unrealistic expectations among the Weimar countries. When Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced massive defense investment in his 2022 Zeitenwende speech, his partners expected a big leap forward from Germany on defense. They failed to take into account legal challenges such as the involvement of the parliament in certain procurement procedures, or the widespread and enduring pacifist mindset in parts of the political class. More recently, Warsaw has signaled openness to stationing French nuclear weapons on its soil, ideally underpinned by a strong French guarantee of nuclear defense for Poland—but this would require an adaptation of France’s own nuclear doctrine and capabilities. These mutual misunderstandings have often led to frustration in the past and dampened political will for ambitious initiatives.
The third and perhaps most obvious shortcoming of the Weimar triangle is that the United Kingdom is missing from the format. While the Weimar Triangle might be a good starting point, it is insufficient and unfit to tackle the challenges of European security today, especially from a military perspective. The debate on the potential deployment of a European “reassurance force” to Ukraine illustrates the weakness of the format. This effort is led by France and the United Kingdom as arguably Europe’s most capable military (and only nuclear) powers, while Germany and Poland have been much more reluctant to engage in the discussions.
Further, it is difficult to imagine a future European security order in which London does not play a major role, regardless of Brexit. Accordingly, London needs to be at the table and alongside the Weimar countries in the driver’s seat for concrete actions and initiatives. The same holds for Italy, which rounds out the “E5” and brings the southern European perspective to the table. The Weimar format might have value for political coordination inside the EU, but when it comes to European security and defense, slightly bigger is much better—and using the E5 format can be a promising solution.