An extraordinary week in and for the European Union will end today with a summit between President Chirac of France, and Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor. It is one of their regular conclaves — deliberately timed to occur shortly before an EU conference on June 16 and 17 — but in every other sense it will be a distinctly irregular occasion. These have often been events in which the most important politicians in Paris and Berlin fixed an agreement on a policy position that would then be pressed on other EU leaders. That will not occur this time. It is doubtful whether it will ever be possible for the Franco-German “engine” to “drive” Europe again.

This is partly, but only partly, because of the astonishing political weakness of the President and Chancellor at this moment. These are talks that could be cruelly described as a case of “lame duck meets dead duck”. At no stage in the past 50 years can the leaderships of France and Germany have been as collectively fragile and as unlikely to achieve a mutual recovery.

It is a matter of debate as to which of the two figures is more unpopular with their electorates. M Chirac’s approval ratings have tumbled to 24 per cent, the lowest number for any president of the republic since records began. The President has responded to his humiliation in the referendum on Sunday by sacking his Prime Minister and selecting a new Cabinet which, with one major exception, consists of people with rather more proven loyalty to M Chirac than ability. The exception, Nicolas Sarkozy, seems to have been included as Interior Minister just to prevent him attacking the Government from outside it. This is not an arrangement that inspires confidence.

M Chirac does not, however, have to face the voters before 2007. Herr Schröder may well have to encounter the German people well before that point. The defeat of his Social Democrats in North Rhine-Westphalia last month — the equivalent of Labour losing the Scottish Parliament to the Conservatives — has fundamentally undermined his administration. The assumption now is that it is no longer a question of whether the Chancellor will fall but instead if his fate will be sealed by his own colleagues before a national election or at the hands of his Christian Democrat rivals at the polls. Herr Schröder is thus, narrowly, the more feeble of these two individuals.

This is not, though, merely a matter of the domestic difficulties of two leaders. The change inside the EU symbolised by the referendum revolts of this week is more seminal in character.

This was conceded yesterday by, perhaps ironically, Michel Barnier, the French Foreign Minister unceremoniously fired by M Chirac after the referendum ballots had been counted. “We have the proof”, he asserted, “that we cannot advance the European project for our citizens without our citizens.” Furthermore, he observed, his country when operating in Brussels and Strasbourg had to start “to convince others rather than impose our views, to get people to go along with us rather than force them to do so”. These are wise words. They may not, alas, be heeded.