(Bloomberg) — Britain and Germany are seeking to strike a broad cooperation pact as part of Keir Starmer’s efforts to improve ties with European allies.
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Britain’s new prime minister held talks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin on Wednesday and the two countries published a joint statement outlining a proposed bilateral deal covering everything from defense and security to technology, clean energy and migration. Starmer called it “part of a broader reset grounded in a new spirit of cooperation.”
“Such a treaty has never existed before between Germany and the UK,” Scholz said alongside Starmer in the Chancellery after their talks.
The two countries are also looking to forge a closer agreement on defense and security within the next few months as a first pillar of the pact. That would facilitate joint procurement and shared military exercises, according to government officials familiar with the planning, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential information.
While one Starmer aide described Scholz as the leader closest to the British prime minister, both personally and politically, that is not yet true of their countries — at least not officially. Although France and Britain have coordinated their defense and security activities for more than a decade under the auspices of the Lancaster House treaties agreed in 2010, there is no equivalent framework for the Anglo-German relationship.
In one of its first foreign policy initiatives, Starmer’s newly elected Labour government has attempted to change that. Less than a week after the July election, Foreign Secretary David Lammy landed in Berlin, and his groundwork now continues in the prime minister’s first bilateral visit himself.
The countries’ ambitions to coordinate their defense received new impetus after Russia’s 2022 invasion prompted them to quickly become two of the continent’s most generous donors of military aid to Ukraine.
The treaty between the United Kingdom and Germany is intended to be a precursor to a security pact for the entire European Union, which the Starmer government wants to use to strengthen defence cooperation with the rest of the Union.
“It is important for us to further develop the relationship between the European Union and Great Britain,” Scholz said during their joint press conference.
However, the British government has remained vague about what the broader agreement entails and has so far given only limited guidance to officials tasked with drafting proposals for the deal, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Negotiations for the EU-wide agreement are not expected to begin until spring 2025. Still, working with Germany makes sense as a precursor, said Sébastien Maillard, an associate fellow at Chatham House. The bloc’s largest economy is “one of the better advocates in the EU for facilitating this closer relationship,” he said.
Starmer, who prides himself on having come to power seven weeks ago with a huge mandate, has described the rapprochement with Germany as his mission to boost his country’s growth figures.
On Wednesday, he will meet Christian Bruch, CEO of Siemens Energy AG, and Armin Papperger, CEO of Rheinmetall AG, both of whom run major German employers with operations in the United Kingdom.
Officials from both parties are keen to emphasise the close relationship between Starmer and Scholz and want to end the mutual mistrust that characterised relations between the former governing Conservative Party and its European partners.
The differences between the two centre-left leaders are clear: Scholz leads a feverish coalition and is under pressure from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, while Starmer has the largest majority in his country since Tony Blair’s victory in 1997.
Still, the British prime minister has something to learn from Scholz’s struggle to contain a threat from the populist fringes. A series of anti-immigration riots, fueled by online disinformation, have already revealed how the far-right wing of British politics is plotting to doom the new prime minister in the long term.
The AfD’s presence in the German legislature has made life difficult for Scholz over the past three years. For Starmer, it’s an uncomfortable experience. He now has to deal with the rise of a party to the right of the Conservatives, which recently won 14% of the vote.
In that context, the prime minister’s allies worry whether his emphasis on stable governance will be enough to mask what is often portrayed by critics and political opponents as a lack of charisma.
But people who find him boring or weak should not underestimate him, a senior German official said of the British prime minister — perhaps with the country’s leader in mind.
–With assistance from Eleanor Thornber, Arne Delfs, and Gregory L. White.
(Updates with Scholz, Starmer comments from the second paragraph. An earlier version of this story was corrected to improve the spelling of Rheinmetall.)
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