Germany Biden expected to make up for Berlin visit next week
US President Joe Biden will probably make up for his visit to Germany next week. According to information from the news magazine "Spiegel" and the German Press Agency, there are plans for meetings with Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Berlin on Friday. However, there has been no official confirmation of this so far.
13.10.2024, 14:18
SDA
Biden had originally planned the trip for last Friday and Saturday, but canceled it at short notice due to a hurricane in the USA. The Democrat had actually wanted to spend two and a half days in Germany and visit Ramstein Air Base in Rhineland-Palatinate as well as Berlin in order to organize a high-level conference on Ukraine. He had then planned to travel on to Angola for a visit.
Biden's first bilateral visit of his term of office
The visit to Germany was originally planned as a formal state visit with an official banquet and other honorary appointments, but the program will now be greatly condensed, wrote "Der Spiegel". Nevertheless, it is still planned that Steinmeier will award Biden the special level of the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his services to German-American friendship.
This is Biden's first bilateral visit to Germany in his almost four-year term of office. Although the US President attended the G7 summit in Elmau in 2022 and made refueling stops with his government plane at the American military base in Ramstein on other occasions, he did not dedicate a solo trip to Germany. The 81-year-old now wants to make up for this shortly before he leaves the White House. Biden leaves office in January.
