GERMANY:The chancellor this week made a final break with the Schröder era, writes Derek Scallyin Berlin
German chancellor Angela Merkel made the final break with Schröder-era foreign policy last week, setting off down her own foreign policy road with Moscow and Paris.
But last week's frosty EU-Russia summit - at which Merkel preached human rights and EU solidarity to Russian president Vladimir Putin - has reopened divisions in the Berlin grand coalition about her new Ostpolitik (eastern policy).
Leading Social Democrat (SPD) Peter Struck has remarked that Germany "should retain equal closeness" to America and Russia.
Reviving Germany's own Boston-or-Berlin conundrum - Washington or Moscow? - was a calculated jab at Merkel who worked quickly on taking office in 2005 to reverse Schröder's foreign policy priorities by restoring the traditional closeness to Washington and a cool distance from Moscow.
Her performance in Russia last week was as far as diplomatically possible from Schröder's back-slapping camaraderie with Putin, whom he once memorably called a "flawless democrat".
Germany's official policy towards Russia speaks of "rapprochement through interrelations", a process of "irreversible" closer diplomatic and economic relations, right up to the point of eventual joint military deployments and even a free trade zone.
After Samara, German officials say this policy has been put on ice as Berlin waits to see if it can do business with Putin's successor after next year's presidential elections.
Foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, seen as a friend of Russia in Berlin, admits in today's Der Spiegel: "Things have become complicated." Leading Christian Democrats have backed Merkel's approach to Putin, and suggested that Struck's "equidistance" remark risks dividing the government and the EU, as the row over the US missile defence project in Europe shows.
"Equidistance to America and Russia is grist to the mill of people in the new EU member states who don't think much of the EU or Nato and seek a special relationship with the US," said Eckart von Klaeden, CDU foreign policy spokesman in Welt am Sonntag yesterday.
Closer to home, French president Nicolas Sarkozy's inaugural visit to Berlin has prompted concerns over his plans for the constitutional treaty and the use of French state aid in the Airbus parent company EADS.
Berlin is hard at work on a simplified treaty that strips the existing document of its constitutional trappings. Merkel is anxious to retain as much as possible of the original document. So she was said to be less than impressed by Sarkozy's suggestion during last week's talks to discard as much as possible to make it appealing to voters in France and the Netherlands who have already voted against the treaty.
The new president also raised German eyebrows with his plan to increase the French stake in the troubled aerospace company EADS.
Sarkozy has said his government would do "its duty" if the company needed a fresh injection of cash - before selling off the government's stake in the long term.
Berlin worries that this could disrupt the two capitals' joint control over the company and put more jobs at risk in German rather than French production facilities.
"The French press is already talking of Sarkopoly," says Henrik Uterwedde, deputy director of the German French Institute in Ludwigsburg.
"Under Sarkozy, a renaissance of industrial politics is likely that doesn't shy away from direct intervention in the company landscape."
Behind last week's hugs and smiles, German diplomats say Merkel reacted "extremely cautiously" to Sarkozy's inaugural overtures.
Observers wondering what to expect from Merkel's relations with Paris and Moscow in the future got a hint from the chancellor herself on the plane back from Samara: "Openness is better than harmony."