ANOTHER European crisis, another Franco-German summit. President Chirac will meet Gerhard Schröder, the Chancellor, tonight after this week’s referendum debacles, but this time the pair are largely impotent.

The Franco-German “locomotive” that has hauled Europe since President de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer, the then Chancellor, sealed the partnership in 1963 looks more like a train wreck or, to mix metaphors, a wobbly tandem pedalled by two lame ducks.

Both leaders have been thrashed by voters recently. Their economies are among the sickliest in Europe, with double-digit unemployment. The European Union’s eastward enlargement has shifted its political centre of gravity and diluted France and Germany’s influence.

Dining in Berlin tonight, “Cher Gerhard” and “Liebe Jacques” are in no position to strike a traditional Franco-German deal behind which the rest of the EU is expected to fall in line. This time, they will be able to do little more than commiserate with each other.

M Chirac’s approval rating slumped this week to 24 per cent, the lowest since his 1995 election. His new Government, led by Dominique de Villepin, his protégé, was being written off as a dud even before its first Cabinet meeting yesterday. Polls suggest that Herr Schröder may not be around much longer after his party’s crushing defeat in North Rhine-Westphalia last month, and his decision to call a general election in September. His likely successor, Angela Merkel, the conservative leader, is much more Atlanticist and much less likely to humour M Chirac’s anti-Americanism.

Herr Schröder and M Chirac will try to agree on what can be retrieved from the wreckage of the charter for “l’Europe Politique” that they jointly proposed in 2000. They also want to strike a deal before the looming battle over EU spending, including the question of Britain’s budget rebate.

But it hardly helps that Britain, the awkward party in the EU’s ménage à trois of leading states, is the beneficiary of the French and Dutch “no” votes and takes over the six-month presidency from Luxembourg next month.

As seen from Paris, a prosperous Britain now lords it over an EU in which most of the 25 members subscribe to the “Anglo-Saxon” free-trade model and reject the protective “Gallo-Rhinish” system which hobbles France and Germany.

The two leaders of “old Europe” share one goal — to suppress the British in a post-constitution Europe. Der Spiegel Online said: “If the Franco-German couple breaks up, Great Britain will be handed Europe on a platter.”

But much is driving them apart, not least the constitution, which was ratified by Germany last month. Before he was dismissed on Thursday, Michel Barnier, the French Foreign Minister and a former EU Commissioner, said that his country’s “no” had inflicted historic damage. “This is the first time in 50 years that the French and Germans have diverged in Europe on a fundamental issue, ” he said.

Herr Schröder has always been less willing than his predecessors to subordinate German interests to French political leadership. Despite institutional ties, including summits, joint Cabinet meetings, joint embassies and exchanging civil servants, Berlin has lately been angered by French actions that breach the spirit of fraternity.

This feud is over the leadership of Airbus, the aircraft maker that is the symbol of European industrial success. Paris is resisting attempts to have a German succeed Noel Forgeard, the Frenchman who has been promoted to co-chairman of EADS, Airbus’s Franco-German-Spanish parent.

Tonight, M Chirac and Herr Schröder will again pledge their allegiance to the partnership that José María Aznar, the former Spanish Prime Minister, mocked as Europe’s “axis of losers”. However, with their economies in need of oxygen from the EU’s more prosperous members, Berlin and Paris are unlikely to try to resurrect “plan B”. This was the scheme to create an integrated inner core of founding states if Britain shot down the constitution.

No one dreamt that the culprit would be France. “It would be unthinkable to try to lock ourselves into a fortress while keeping Britain, the most prosperous big nation, on the outside,” a French centre-right party leader told The Times.

“Enlarged Europe can never again be run by a Franco- German directorate.”

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