‘Distribution of weight’. On 25 March 1994, ten years after Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl and French President François Mitterrand held hands in a gesture of friendship in Verdun in September 1984, German cartoonist Walter Hanel illustrates the changing power relationship within the Franco-German duo. While in 1984 France was the stronger partner in this relationship (on the left, François Mitterrand stands taller than the diminutive Chancellor Kohl), things have changed a great deal by 1994. The economic powerhouse that is the unified Germany has taken the place of the French partner in the Franco-German duo and has consolidated its role on the international stage, particularly in view of the future EU enlargement to include Austria and the Scandinavian countries and in relations with the Russian Federation under leader Boris Yeltsin.