Before Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel arrived for a meeting in Hanover earlier this month it seemed as if the Franco-German relationship – once regarded as the motor of European integration – had broken down, possibly beyond repair.

The French president and the German chancellor had been at loggerheads over a plan by Mr Sarkozy to create a union of states around the Mediterranean under French leadership. Whereas some observers may have been tempted to dismiss the idea as an unrealisable campaign pledge, Germany took it very seriously. To Berlin it seemed to undermine the very purpose of its relationship with France.