US President Joe Biden has arrived in Germany for the last visit of his term in office. His visit program doesn’t start until Friday.
US President Joe Biden arrived in Berlin for a short visit. Biden’s government plane Air Force One landed in the capital late in the evening, where the Democrat wants to meet, among others, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday.
The 81-year-old was originally supposed to travel to Berlin a week earlier, but canceled the trip at short notice – because of a hurricane that was heading towards the southeast coast of the USA at the time. Now Biden is making up for his visit in a scaled-down form, with a short working visit instead of a state visit.
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On Friday morning, Biden will first be received with military honors by Federal President Steinmeier at Bellevue Palace and will then receive the “Special Level of the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic” – the highest award that Germany can give. Of the 14 US presidents who have governed the Federal Republic since its inception, only George Bush senior has been honored with this honor.
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A meeting with Scholz in the Chancellery is then planned. They are later joined by French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. This means that the heads of state and government of the four most powerful NATO partners and Ukraine’s most important allies are sitting together. The main topics of the round are likely to be the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Visit to Germany postponed
Biden originally wanted to hold a large international conference with various heads of state and government at the US air force base Ramstein in Rhineland-Palatinate during his visit to Germany to discuss further support for Ukraine. That won’t happen now. The White House announced that the Ukraine summit would be held via video link in November.
It is Biden’s first bilateral visit to Germany in his almost four-year term in office. The US President took part in the G7 summit in Elmau in 2022 and made refueling stops with his government plane at the American military base in Ramstein on another occasion, but did not dedicate a solo trip to Germany.
Visit shortly before leaving the White House
The 81-year-old is now making up for this shortly before he leaves the White House. Biden will leave office in January. He dropped out of the race for a second term in July following pressure from his party. Numerous party colleagues had publicly expressed doubts about his mental and physical fitness.
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Note: This article has been updated several times.
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
