Norbert Röttgen hopes to succeed Angela Merkel as German chancellor | Sean Gallup/Getty Images Europe must step up, German leadership hopeful Röttgen says Candidate to take over Christian Democrats makes overtures to France.

PARIS — Europe needs to become more of a force in shaping world events, driven by stronger Franco-German cooperation, according to Norbert Röttgen, a contender in the race to lead Germany's governing Christian Democrats.

Röttgen, a former minister and current chair of the Bundestag's foreign affairs committee, said Europe needed a concerted approach on issues as diverse as China, 5G technology and Africa's Sahel region.

"This should be the hour of Europe, but it is not," Röttgen said Tuesday during a Q&A session at the think tank Institut Montaigne in Paris, where he gave a speech and met with French President Emmanuel Macron's special adviser on Europe, Clément Beaune. "We have to prove that we are able to shape realities."

Röttgen is the outsider in a three-way race to lead the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Germany’s leading center-right political force, which has governed since 2005. Whoever is approved by the party selectorate at a special congress in Berlin on April 25 will be in pole position to take over from Angela Merkel as federal chancellor.

Adopting much of Macron's vision of the changing international context and the need for a more sovereign and empowered EU, Röttgen went further than Merkel, and much of his own party, on some key policies.

Röttgen said Berlin should join France at "the vanguard of a common foreign and security policy."

He advocated for a European 5G response to China's Huawei, building up European defense, pushing back against American extraterritorial sanctions through a strengthened euro, and a more deliberate and empowered European foreign policy that includes a military component.

"A military component must be one element of our foreign policy, I don't rely on it but we can't outsource this capacity to the United States, for example, so it has to be included as an element of a comprehensive foreign policy approach," he said.

Röttgen also outlined his foreign policy vision, and underlined his commitment to Franco-German relations, by publishing an op-ed the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Le Monde on Tuesday. He said Berlin should join France at "the vanguard of a common foreign and security policy" while working to build a "deeper and more trusting relationship" with Poland, and continuing to work on foreign and security policies with the U.K. in the E3 format (France, Germany and the U.K.) post Brexit.

The article was pitched as a response to Macron's 2017 Sorbonne speech, in which he set out a vision for far-reaching reforms of the EU.

Röttgen has called for the German government to restrict Chinese technology company Huawei from contracts to build telecommunications infrastructure.

Nevertheless Röttgen marked some substantive disagreements with Macron. He held a cautious, classically German center-right position on the eurozone and EU budgets, in contrast to France's call for greater ambition. He criticized French re-engagement with Russia and called for imposing European sanctions on Moscow for what he branded war crimes in Idlib, Syria.

"What I'm missing [in] the [French] wish to reset a relationship: What is the basis in the Russian policies, politics and in Russian intentions? If it is ... just wishful thinking to have a better relationship despite the fact that Vladimir Putin is demonstrating every day and now by committing war crimes in Idlib that he doesn’t care ... then I think it will remain wishful thinking which ... [is not] a strong foreign policy," Röttgen said.

On China, Röttgen called in the op-ed for better coordination between European countries, indicating he would follow Macron's policy of including other leaders in summits with the Chinese leadership and, where possible, invite Poland as part of efforts to "fracture" China's policy of holding separate summits with leaders from Central and Eastern Europe.

In his current position as chair of the Bundestag's foreign affairs committee, Röttgen has called for the German government to restrict Chinese technology company Huawei from contracts to build telecommunications infrastructure.