BERLIN — Like two next-door neighbors who have had a bit of a falling out over their divergent economic circumstances, Germany and France seem to be making a special effort to make up.

On Wednesday, Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, became the first in that post to attend a German cabinet meeting. The visit, which the French Foreign Ministry said “reflects the dynamism of French-German relations,” followed a similar cabinet session in Paris in May attended by Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Since they signed the landmark Élysée Treaty in 1963, the Continent’s two biggest powers have developed a closeness unseen between any other two European nations, particularly countries that battled each other for centuries.

But gaping differences in economic status and philosophy have darkened the mood in recent months. The German economy is still growing, and unemployment here was 4.9 percent in September, according to the European Union’s statistics office. By contrast, the jobless rate in France is stubbornly stuck at 10.5 percent, and the French government has defiantly insisted that it will not meet European Union deficit targets until 2017.