Emmanuel Macron had been seen as the man to bring France and Germany closer together during a time of instability in the EU due to Brexit.
But nearly four months into Mr Macron’s presidency, senior German officials say they are still waiting for ideas from Paris about strengthening the union.
With France calling for more burden-sharing across the bloc and Germany stating countries need to take responsibility for their own issues, the partnership is at an impasse.
Berlin is losing patience with Mr Macron, who is facing plummeting approval ratings at home and across the EU.
One senior German official said: “There is a new energy with Macron. But so far the ideas are the same ones that we’ve been hearing from Paris for years.”
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Another said: “We have not advanced at all. It is hard to see where the middle ground lies.”
Europe’s common currency area is emerging from the economic and financial crisis that began nearly a decade ago and almost tore it apart.
But the turmoil of past years exposed deep flaws in Europe’s architecture and, with an array of new challenges emerging from Brexit to US President Donald Trump, people are watching closely to see if France and Germany can revive their troubled partnership – and the eurozone.
During his presidential election campaign, Mr Macron called for a big leap forward in European cooperation towards a so-called fiscal union.
He is pushing for the creation of a eurozone finance minister and parliament, as well as a stand-alone budget for the currency bloc to cushion economic shocks in individual member states and head off future crises.
Both the German and French sides say it will be important to have a rough plan for eurozone reform in place before German coalition talks – post the election – begin in earnest, most likely in the second half of October.
That way, reform ideas can be embedded in the German coalition agreement, a detailed policy blueprint for the new government that can run over 200 pages.
One path, if Mrs Merkel emerges victorious as polls suggest, would be for Berlin and Paris to hold a bilateral summit on euro zone reform in early next month and then present initial ideas to European partners at an EU summit scheduled for October 19-20.
But one German official said: “If we don’t manage to come up with something in the first half of 2018 it will get messy.”
Mr Macron has also faced criticism in the UK for his attempts at a Franco-German power grab in Brussels.
UKIP’s Jane Collins MEP said” “Some functionaries in Paris and some functionaries in Berlin are trying to decide the future of Europe without any say for the electorate – how is that a good idea?
“In post war France there has been a tradition of ‘civil servants know best’ which has been a significant driver for France’s support for ‘more Europe’ despite the people voting against the Constitution and supporting eurosceptic politicians in significant numbers.
“In the UK we don’t have that same view of the ‘omniscient Whitehall mandarin’ – in fact they will probably assume they don’t know what they are doing. It’s just another example of how the UK’s model of democracy and our political traditions don’t fit with the EU model.”