"Cher Val

A colorful visit boosts a flowering European friendship

Not since Charles de Gaulle stepped onto a red carpet at Bonn's Wahn Airport in 1962 had a French President made an official state visit to West Germany. But when Valery Giscard d'Estaing alighted from his presidential Mystere jet last week, the 21-gun salute that greeted him merely punctuated the close Franco-German ties that have grown particularly strong since Giscard and West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt came to power within eleven days of each other in 1974. Although it rained during most of the five-day visit, there were few visible clouds over what British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has sarcastically called the "Franco-German axis."

Only in its ceremonial trappings did Giscard's state visit differ from numerous earlier trips to West Germany for consultations with Schmidt. In fact "Lieber Helmut" and "Cher Valery," as they call each other, meet at least six times a year and talk on the telephone about once a week. Their friendship, dating back to the early '70s, when both served as Finance Ministers, rests largely on shared views and temperaments. Both leaders are fiscal conservatives and political pragmatists. In addition, both men face tough re-election battles within the next ten months, leading some cynics to suggest that saturation TV coverage of the two incumbents was the real reason behind the state visit.

It was indeed a photogenic journey, studded with fluttering tricolor bunting, fireworks displays and stirring military reviews. Accompanied by his attractive wife Anne-Aymone, Giscard purposely passed up such major cities as Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich in order to tour what he called l'Allemagne profonde (Germany in depth). His stops included Baden-Baden, Kassel, Wuerzburg and Luebeck, all towns with populations under 230,000. He also made an unscheduled visit to Koblenz, 40 miles south of Bonn, where he was born in 1926; his father was a civilian official with French forces occupying the Rhineland. Often looking more populist than patrician, the spindly French President plunged into the crowds, delighting them with a spate of French-accented German phrases.

Politics was rarely absent from the pageantry, and Giscard seized several occasions to assert what he called the "independence and power of Europe." At a state banquet near Bonn, for example, he startled his hosts somewhat by calling for a "renaissance of European influence," led by France and Germany, and "the reappearance of an independent and self-assured Europe in world affairs."

Giscard's strong language prompted West German officials to assure Washington privately that Bonn remained solidly pro-West and pro-NATO. Taking a softer line in his public pronouncements, Schmidt carefully avoided Giscard's themes of "power" and "influence" in favor of blander and more ecumenical expressions of "cooperation and friendship."

Though they differed slightly in their rhetoric, the two leaders announced their "basic agreement on all points" following the two-day official talks that wrapped up the state visit. As Giscard flew off into the low, wet overcast, Schmidt's aides pronounced themselves satisfied that the Chancellor had pleased "Cher Valery" without unduly upsetting Washington or London--no mean task in these delicate times for the Atlantic Alliance.

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