In search of a common spirit: the countries of the Weimar Triangle in the Covid-19 crisis Paper Series "Acting European? The European Union and the Weimar Triangle in the Coronavirus Crisis", No. 5, 2 June 2020
The coronavirus crisis has affected the countries of the Weimar Triangle to varying degrees. Bilateral relations between Germany and Poland as well as Germany and France have been strongly influenced by border closures, which have led to tensions between the countries.
Although Franco-German relations seem to be gaining momentum after years of relative gridlock, the lack of Franco-Polish cooperation as well as common initiatives led to the complete invisibility of the Weimar Triangle. At this point, new ways of thinking are urgently needed if the Triangle is to fulfill its raison d'être.
German-French relations, according to Nele Wissmann and Łukasz Jurczyszyn in their article "In search of the common spirit: the countries of the Weimar Triangle in the Covid-19 crisis", are picking up speed again after years of relative standstill. However, the lack of Polish-French cooperation and joint initiatives means that the Weimar Triangle as a whole has remained invisible and urgently in need of revitalization.
The series “Acting European? The European Union and the Weimar Triangle in the Corona Virus Crisis” highlights current reactions and new policy approaches in dealing with the corona crisis and its effects. The short publications of the first part of the series are devoted to the national reactions of France, Poland and Germany. They investigate how their cooperation will work in the current crisis and which European approaches Paris, Berlin and Warsaw are pursuing. The publications in the second part focus on the European Union (EU) level and examine the effects of the corona crisis on key aspects of European integration - such as sovereignty, solidarity and freedom (s) - within the Union and beyond.
The series includes ten short analyses that appear between May and July 2020. The fifth contribution “In search of the common spirit: the countries of the Weimar triangle in the Covid-19 crisis” by Nele Wissmann and Łukasz Jurczyszyn is - like all other papers in the series - available for download on the website of the Genshagen Foundation.