German Chancellor Angela Merkel believes firmly in strong German-US relations and is simply being honest with the US when she flags up policy differences with Washington, her spokesman said yesterday.
Merkel sent shockwaves through Washington and London on Sunday when she said that Europe must take its fate into its own hands, implying that the US under President Donald Trump and Britain after its Brexit vote were no longer reliable partners.
“The times in which we can fully count on others are somewhat over, as I have experienced in the past few days,”’ she said during an election campaign event in Bavaria. “And so all I can say is that we Europeans must really take our destiny into our own hands.”
Photo: AFP
Berlin remains committed to strong trans-Atlantic relations, but Merkel’s suggestion after meetings with Trump that Europe can no longer entirely rely on the US “speaks for itself,” spokesman Steffen Seibert told a regular news conference in Berlin, adding: “It was a deeply convinced trans-Atlanticist who spoke.”
US-German relations “are a strong pillar of our foreign and security policy, and Germany will continue working to strengthen these relations,”’ he said. “Precisely because they are so important, it’s right to name differences honestly.”
Following the end of the G7 meeting in Sicily on Saturday, Merkel was sharply critical of Trump’s decision not to join the other countries in reiterating support for the 2015 Paris Agreement that aims to slow global warming, calling the climate talks “`very unsatisfactory.”
“Here is a situation where it’s six, seven if you include the EU, against one,” she said.
Trump later tweeted that he would make his “final decision” on the Paris accord this week.
Germany has also bristled at criticism from Trump over NATO defense spending and the country’s large trade surplus. It is also an election year for Merkel who is seeking her fourth term as chancellor in September.
Her main challenger, the Social Democrat candidate Martin Schulz, was even more outspoken in his comments about the G7 and NATO meetings last week, saying on Sunday night that the summits made clear Trump was a “president of the United States of America who wants to humiliate others, who presents himself like an authoritarian ruler.”
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