On 11 December 1996, two days after Jacques Chirac, President of the French Republic, and Helmut Kohl, German Chancellor, send a joint letter to John Bruton, Irish Prime Minister and President-in-Office of the Council of the European Union, in which they set out the political and institutional priorities of France and Germany at the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) for the revision of the Treaty on European Union, the Austrian daily newspaper Die Presse highlights the difficulties faced by President Chirac in coordinating European and national policy.