France & Germany: Two in Tandem

West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt stood beneath the federal eagle in Bonn's Bundestag one day recently and vigorously defended his relationship with French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing against an attack by an opposition Deputy. "It's true that we have friendly relations," boomed Schmidt, "but it would be a great mistake to interpret this, as the French press has done, as if it were a tandem. A tandem, the way I understand it, is a bicycle on which two pedal but only one steers."

Maybe so, but to a good many Europeans these days it certainly looks as if the two leaders are pedaling down the same path, if not doing a little hand-holding on the side. Since coming to power within two weeks of each other last May, Schmidt and Giscard have chatted weekly by telephone (sometimes oftener), got together to discuss defense and foreign policy four times, mapped new plans and programs for the European Economic Community, and established a working relationship that is almost as informal and candid as if they were members of the same government.

Personal relations between the two leaders' immediate predecessors --Georges Pompidou and Willy Brandt --were never close and sometimes downright frosty. Thus the spectacle of a genuinely close relationship between Paris and Bonn is both refreshing and a little startling to many Europeans. Indeed, the Giscard-Schmidt friendship has caused a certain amount of anxiety among some EEC members, who fear that the Community's two most powerful representatives could gang up to promote their own interests to the detriment of the smaller countries. Those fears may have been somewhat premature. Last week Bonn shocked the EEC--as well as Paris and the powerful French farm lobby--by rejecting a previously agreed upon 5% hike in Common Market farm prices. Nonetheless, there is still a good deal of hope that these relatively young, pragmatic leaders can rescue the Community from the stagflation that has followed the oil embargo and salvage the moldering ideal of European unity.

Fast Friends. Few know the ins and outs of the Community's problems better than Giscard and Schmidt. The two men first got to know each other at EEC conferences where, as Finance Ministers for their respective governments, they mapped out monetary policies and trade negotiations. They not only became fast friends but agreed on the EEC's failings. Giscard, who detests the pomp and circumstance of Common Market summitry, has tried to set up more informal meetings; recently, he was host to the leaders of the Nine at a casual working dinner in the Elysee Palace. For his part, Schmidt wants to strip the Brussels bureaucracy of some of its power and most of its paper work.

A technocrat who rose through the ranks of the Social Democratic Party, Schmidt, 55, is only five years younger than Willy Brandt, but his brusque, businesslike style has made it seem as if a new generation has taken over in Bonn. Bouncing out of his Rhineside bungalow early each morning, he likes to blast a referee's whistle as he starts across the lawn to the chancellery. The message to his aides: get things moving. To Germans, he is known as a Macher (doer). He has cut out the rambling presentations from ministers that Brandt allowed and lectured them on his credo: "There will always be problems. They are to be solved, and we will solve them."

That kind of toughness has won him both friends and enemies. Axel Springer's Die Welt calls him "a right leftist without trimmings." And Schmidt an swers: "I don't mind when people call me hard or decisive. I think I am a normal man." Privately, he enjoys his reputation as a hard-nose and sometimes puts on public displays of toughness to nurture the image. He recently lashed out at some youthful left-wing critics in his party with such vehemence that even seasoned politicos winced.

Radical Chic. While Schmidt has restored a bit of Prussian efficiency to German politics, Giscard, 48, has brought radical chic to France's government. The transformation is all the more surprising because as Pompidou's

Finance Minister, Giscard always seemed to be a cold, remote bureaucrat. But he set the country on its ear at his very first presidential press conference, declaring: "I aim first of all to dust off the republic." That is precisely what he has done. From his low-keyed inauguration and his subsequent stroll along the Champs-Elysees, Giscard has launched an all-out effort to stamp his presidency as young, relaxed, liberal and open.

After two years of a dying President who kept himself secluded from the public, the French suddenly found Giscard everywhere. He went to a movie with his daughter, took his son to dinner at a small bistro in Les Halles, slipped out of the Elysee Palace ("this prison with its faded gilt," he calls it) to drive his own car to a play. He cut the palace guard from 190 to 120 and added potted orange trees in the courtyard. Instead of the usual beribboned official portrait, he settled for a simple pose in a business suit. More substantially, Giscard has lowered the voting age to 18, liberalized the sale of contraceptives, made divorce easier to obtain, ended police wiretaps, and initiated prison reforms.

Lately some critics have begun to suggest that Giscard's offensive de charme was all style and no substance. There is no question that the real test will come on his ability to deal with the economic crisis. The French are deeply worried about spiraling inflation (currently 16%) and the likely prospect for another round of oil price increases. Last week Giscard announced that France would cut its oil imports by 10% next year; if prices go up, the cuts will be even bigger.

Both Giscard and Schmidt see their own economies as inextricably tied to that of the European Community. As Schmidt told the Nine at Giscard's dinner, European cooperation is absolutely essential because if economic ruin hits, "no one, not even the Federal Republic, will escape it." Their obvious intention is to create a kind of bandwagon effect; that is, if the EEC's two biggest members can achieve a nucleus of stability and prosperity, the other members will be drawn along. Whether they can do so remains to be seen. But simply by working together, Giscard and Schmidt may yet bring the old dream of a united Europe a little closer to reality.

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