BERLIN — As Europe’s traditional Franco-German engine splutters, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is increasingly looking to team up with hard-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as his co-pilot in steering the EU.

The two are set to meet at a summit in the opulent Villa Doria Pamphilj in Rome on Friday to double down on their budding alliance. They are both right-wing Atlanticists who want to cool tensions with U.S. President Donald Trump. And they both have their frustrations with French President Emmanuel Macron.

In years past, Germany would traditionally have turned to France at decisive moments to map out blueprints for the EU, so it’s significant that Merz is now aligning with Meloni in his attempt to drive forward core European priorities on trade and industry.

In part, Merz’s gravitation toward Meloni is driven by annoyance with France. Berlin is irritated that Paris sought to undermine the landmark Mercosur trade deal with South America, which the Germans have long wanted in order to promote industrial exports. Germany is also considering pulling out of a €100 billion joint fighter-jet program over disputes with the French.

Against that backdrop, the alignment with Rome has a compelling logic.

During Friday’s meeting, Merz and Meloni are expected to sign up to cooperation on defense, according to diplomats involved in the preparations. It’s not clear what that involves, but Germany’s Rheinmetall and Italy’s Leonardo already have a joint venture to build tanks and other military vehicles.

Perhaps most ambitiously, Italy and Germany are also teaming up to draft a new game plan to revive EU industry and expand exports in a joint position paper for the Feb. 12 European Council summit. Berlin and Rome style themselves as the “two main industrial European nations” and have condemned delays to the Mercosur agreement.

That language will grate in Paris.

In for the long haul

For Giangiacomo Calovini, a lawmaker from Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, who heads the parliament’s Italian-German friendship group, the Merz-Meloni alliance makes sense given Macron’s impending departure from the European stage after next year’s French election.

“[Our] two countries have stable governments, especially if compared with France’s,” he said. “It is clear that Meloni and Merz still probably have a long path ahead of them, during which they can work together.”

Safeguarding the relationship with Trump is crucial to both leaders, and both Merz and Meloni have sought to avoid transatlantic blow-ups. They have been supported in their firefighting by their foreign ministers, Johann Wadephul and Antonio Tajani.

“Giorgia Meloni and Friedrich Merz have represented the European wing most open to dialogue with President Trump,” said Pietro Benassi, former Italian ambassador to Berlin and the EU. “The somewhat surreal acceleration [of events] driven by the American president is confirming a convergence in the positions of Italy and Germany, rather than between Italy and France, or France and Germany.”

In contrast to the softly-softly approach in Rome and Berlin, Calovini accused Macron of unhelpfully “contradictory” behavior toward Trump. “He acts as the one who wants to challenge the United States of America but then sends texts — that Trump has inelegantly published — in which he begs Trump to have dinner,” he complained.

Good chemistry

Officials in Berlin now privately gush over the growing cooperation with Meloni, describing the relationship with Rome as dependable.

“Italy is reliable,” said one senior German government official, granted anonymity to speak candidly. It’s not an adjective authorities in Berlin have often used to describe their French counterparts of late.

“France is more verbal, but Italy is much more pragmatic,” said Axel Schäfer, a senior lawmaker in Germany’s Social Democratic Party long focused on German-Italian relations.

An Italian official also praised the “good chemistry” between Merz and Meloni personally. That forms a marked contrast with the notoriously strained relations between Meloni and Macron, who have frequently clashed.

In their effort to draw closer, Merz and Meloni have at times resorted to hyperbole.

During his inaugural visit to Rome as chancellor last year, Merz said there was “practically complete agreement between our two countries on all European policy issues.”

Meloni returned the sentiment.

“It is simply impossible to cast doubt on the relations between Italy and Germany,” she said at the time.

Marriage of convenience

That is overegging it. The two leaders, in fact, have considerable differences.

Meloni refused to support an ultimately doomed plan, pushed by Merz, to use frozen Russian assets to finance military aid for Ukraine. Meloni also briefly withheld support for the Mercosur trade deal in order to win concessions for Italian farmers before ultimately backing it.

Critically, Rome and Berlin are likely to prove very awkward allies when it comes to public finances. Italy has long pushed for looser European fiscal policy — and been a natural ally of France on this point — while Germany has served as the continent’s iron disciplinarian on spending.

But even here there has been some convergence, with Meloni cutting Italy’s spending and Merz presiding over a historic expansion in debt-fueled outlays on infrastructure and defense.

Fundamentally, much of the growing alliance between Merz and Meloni is a product of shifts undertaken for their own domestic political survival.

Meloni has dragged her nationalist Brothers of Italy party to the center, particularly on foreign policy matters. At the same time, the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in Germany has forced Merz to shift his conservative party sharply to the right on migration.    

This ideological merging has allowed for a warming of relations. As Merz has sought partners on the European level to drastically reduce the inflow of asylum seekers coming to Europe, to reduce regulation and to push for more trade — and provide a counterbalance to Macron — Meloni has become an increasingly important figure for the chancellor.

Still, Stefano Stefanini, a former senior Italian diplomat and NATO representative, said there would always be limits to the relationship.

“It’s very tactical,” he said. “There’s no coordinated strategy. There are a number of issues on which Meloni and Merz find themselves on the same side.”

Stefanini also noted that spending commitments — particularly on military projects — would be an area where Rome would once again find itself in a more natural alliance with France.

“On defense spending Italy and France are closer, because Germany has the fiscal capacity to spend by itself, while Italy and France need to get as much financial support as they can from the EU,” he said.

Despite such differences, Meloni has seized her opening to get closer to Merz.

“Meloni has understood that, as there is some tension in the France-Germany relationship, she could infiltrate and get closer to Germany,” said Marc Lazar, an expert on Franco-Italian relations who teaches at the Luiss University in Rome and at Sciences Po in Paris.