INTRODUCTION

It is a commonplace that there is, in some sense, a ‘special’ relationship between France and Germany and that these two states somehow play a ‘special’ or central role in the European Union (EU). The idea that there is a ‘special’ FrancoGerman relationship is expressed in numerous labels applied to it: link, tandem, couple, pair, entente, axis, alliance, friendship, partnership or ‘privileged’ partnership, etc. For the role played jointly by the two states in the EU, the concepts or ideas of the engine, motor, locomotive, pacemaker, vanguard, core, hard core, or indeed, as in a famous or notorious German Christian Democratic paper on European policy, ‘the core of the hard core’ have been used (CDU/CSU Parliamentary Group: 1994).