LAST MONTH Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron entered an EU summit with a plan. The German and French leaders agreed that a “strategic agenda” document, drawn up to set the EU’s priorities for the next five years, was inadequate. The passages on climate and migration were weak, and what about defence? But their extensive rewrites, drawn up just before the meeting, sparked a revolt among the other leaders, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni among them. Voices were raised, fingers jabbed, and the pair retreated in humiliation. They had failed the most elementary test of the European Council: avoid springing surprises on your colleagues.

The story would be just one data point in the EU’s long history of communiqué contretemps if it did not highlight a worrying trend. For if Mr Macron is no coalition-builder, Germany, the EU’s biggest economy and most populous member, is supposed to be different. But where the country once shaped the club’s approach to everything from fiscal policy to Brexit, under Mr Scholz it is punching well below its weight—and irritating its partners.