UN General Assembly: Annalena Baerbock is said to be President

International ascent or abandoning pool? After leaving the Federal Government, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is to switch to a top position at the United Nations in New York in September. According to information from the German Press Agency, the Federal Government wants to name the Greens politician from government circles as a candidate for the chair of the UN General Assembly in the session period 2025/26. A corresponding cabinet decision in the circulation process is therefore initiated.

Baerbock is to be elected by the UN General Assembly in early June and will take up its one-year office in September. According to internal agreements, your choice is a matter of form at the United Nations. With the takeover, Baerbock will resign her Bundestag mandate, it said. The office of President of the United Nations General Assembly should not be confused with the office of UN General Secretary António Guterres.

At the beginning of March, after it was clear that the Greens left the government, Baerbock had justified their waiver of a leadership role in the Green Bundestag Group with the fact that they “wanted to think about” after years on high-speed “what this moment means for my family and me”.

Baerbock led the Greens in the Bundestag election campaign as the first candidate for chancellor in 2021. In November, Baerbock and her husband Daniel Holefleisch announced the separation. Baerbock has two daughters aged 9 and 13. From her personal environment it is said that the children would accompany Baerbock to New York and attend school there.

Baerbock’s predecessor at the UN General Assembly was particularly noticeable with representative tasks. They directed plenary sessions and made sure that the rules of procedure were complied with. However, the 44-year-old could also initiate thematic debates in the new job and present reports or play an intermediary role in consultations and negotiations on important UN issues. As President of all countries, however, she would have to hold back with too political statements.

Baerbock will not have direct decision -making. But it is quite possible that she tries to use the task as a springboard for further roles on international or German parquet. She could also play a role in the search of a successor for UN General Secretary Guterres, whose term of office ends at the end of 2026. For the payment in the office of President of the United Nations General Assembly, the posting country must pay – that is, Germany.

Before the election planned for the beginning of June, Baerbock wants to present her work program in New York in May. This had already been launched by the top German top diplomatin Helga Schmid, originally intended as a candidate. Schmid was nominated by Germany in September 2024. Now the position should be occupied politically. Baerbock would replace the former Prime Minister of Cameroon, Philémon Yang.

With the candidacy, Germany underlines its strong commitment to the United Nations, it said from government circles. Due to the frequent blockages in the Security Council, the UN General Assembly has become even more important in recent years. A strong political German occupation of the office is an important building block for the German candidacy for a non-independent seat in the UN Security Council in 2027/28.

The Greens MP Anton Hofreiter congratulated his party colleague. “If the statement is right, I warmly congratulate Annalena Baerbock. This is an important position. Even if the UN is in not inconsiderable difficulties at the moment, you still have to do everything to strengthen multilateralism,” he said world TV.

Russia rejects Baerbock’s UN candidacy. “It would be strange to see the granddaughter of a Nazis at the post of the chairman of the general assembly 80 years after the victory (in the Second World War), who is proud of the” heroic deeds of her grandfather “,” said the spokeswoman for the Russian foreign office, Maria Sacharova, according to the state news agency TASS.

Baerbock speaks openly about her grandfather, who was in action on the Eastern Front. Moscow has already discussed its Nazi past several times to discredit the German Foreign Minister.

The office of President of the UN General Assembly is entitled to internal UN agreements in the upcoming period of the so-called regional group “Western European and others”. With regard to its strong commitment to the UN, Germany received the occupation right for the upcoming session period some time ago.

The majority of the previous presidents of the general assembly were previously Foreign Minister. The last German cast to date goes back to the Cold War: in 1980, the then Federal Republic of UN ambassador Rüdiger von Wechmar was in the office and in 1987 for the GDR its former UN ambassador Peter Florin.

In a letter to the Greens parliamentary group and the Green State Association of Brandenburg, to which she belongs, Baerbock had written in March, and since 2008 she had carried out political responsibility since 2008. “I always gave everything in all this time.”

At the same time, these intensive years would have had a private price. “Therefore, for personal reasons, I decided to take a step out of the bright spotlight and not to apply for a leading office in the parliamentary group.”

Note: This article has been updated several times.