Saturday

25th Mar 2023

Trump and Merkel flirt with better relations

  • Trump and Merkel in the White House earlier this month (Photo: bundeskanzlerin.de)

Donald Trump has congratulated Angela Merkel on a regional poll, while Merkel invited his daughter to Berlin as the US and Germany mend ties.

The US president’s spokesman told press in Washington on Monday (27 March) that Trump had phoned Merkel to “congratulate” her on her party’s “success in recent elections”.

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Become an expert on Europe

Get instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

They spoke after the German chancellor’s CDU party won a bellwether election in the region of Saarland on Sunday with 41 percent of votes, whereas the main anti-EU party, the AfD, got just 6 percent.

Trump himself told press, also on Monday, that Merkel had invited his daughter, Ivanka Trump, to go to a summit on women business chiefs, the W20, in Berlin in April.

“The chancellor of Germany … has asked Ivanka to go to Germany, and she'll be working on similar [women’s] issues with chancellor Merkel. So that will be very exciting for you [Ivanka]. That's going to happen very soon. It's a very great honour,” he said next to his daughter at a press briefing in the White House.

The friendly gestures come after an awkward Trump-Merkel meeting in the US capital earlier this month.

Trump declined to shake Merkel’s hand and joked that she had been spied upon by the former US administration.

He also lambasted EU states for not paying their share of Nato collective defence.

In earlier comments after taking office, Trump had accused Merkel of manipulating the value of the euro and attacked her for letting in too many migrants.

He had also said that more member states would quit the EU and that Nato was “obsolete”, using the kind of rhetoric normally heard from German anti-EU parties or from Russia.

Key to transatlantic unity

US-German relations are key to transatlantic unity at a time of increased international instability.

But a British newspaper reported over the weekend that Trump, when he met Merkel in Washington, had gone further than just comments on Nato.

The Sunday Times said that he had handed the chancellor a mock invoice for what she owed the US since 2002, due to Germany’s shortfall on a Nato pledge to spend 2 percent of GDP on defence.

The Sunday Times said the bill added interest and would have amounted to more than €300 billion.

It also quoted a German government minister, who asked to stay anonymous, as having said: “The concept behind putting out such demands is to intimidate the other side, but the chancellor took it calmly and will not respond to such provocations”.

Both the White House and the German chancellery denied the report on Monday.

Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said in Berlin: “Reports that president Trump had presented the federal chancellor with a kind of bill with a concrete billion sum are not true”.

Trump’s spokesman, Sean Spicer, who has been caught lying to press on several occasions, also said: “No, this is not true.”

Macron meets Merkel, says France must reform

The independent liberal candidate to the presidential election said in Berlin that France must reform itself if it wants to remain close to Germany and play a role in Europe.

Interview

Let's not lecture Trump, says top German MP

Europeans need to propose "projects of common interest" to the US president to preserve "Western unity" on Russia, Norbert Roettgen, the chair of Bundestag's foreign affairs committee said.

Wannabe US envoy calls EU a 'failure'

Malloch, who wants to be Trump's envoy to Brussels, said EU should become a trade bloc of strong nation states to win US support.

Opinion

EU's new critical raw materials act could be a recipe for conflict

Solar panels, wind-turbines, electric vehicle batteries and other green technologies require minerals including aluminium, cobalt and lithium — which are mined in some of the most conflict-riven nations on earth, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea, and Kazakhstan.

Opinion

How much can we trust Russian opinion polls on the war?

The lack of Russian opposition to the Russo-Ukrainian War is puzzling. The war is going nowhere, Russian casualties are staggering, the economy is in trouble, and living standards are declining, and yet polls indicate that most Russians support the war.

Latest News

  1. EU's new critical raw materials act could be a recipe for conflict
  2. Okay, alright, AI might be useful after all
  3. Von der Leyen pledges to help return Ukrainian children
  4. EU leaders agree 1m artillery shells for Ukraine
  5. Polish abortion rights activist vows to appeal case
  6. How German business interests have shaped EU climate agenda
  7. The EU-Turkey migration deal is dead on arrival at this summit
  8. Sweden worried by EU visa-free deal with Venezuela

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Nordic Council of MinistersNordic and Baltic ways to prevent gender-based violence
  2. Nordic Council of MinistersCSW67: Economic gender equality now! Nordic ways to close the pension gap
  3. Nordic Council of MinistersCSW67: Pushing back the push-back - Nordic solutions to online gender-based violence
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersCSW67: The Nordics are ready to push for gender equality
  5. Promote UkraineInvitation to the National Demonstration in solidarity with Ukraine on 25.02.2023
  6. Azerbaijan Embassy9th Southern Gas Corridor Advisory Council Ministerial Meeting and 1st Green Energy Advisory Council Ministerial Meeting

Join EUobserver

Support quality EU news

Join us