Barack Obama is meeting Angela Merkel in Berlin to talk about Russian sanctions, the fight against Islamic State and the future of the EU-US trade agreement in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election victory.
The final leg of the US president’s last trip to Europe began on Wednesday night with a three-hour dinner at Hotel Adlon with the German chancellor, who he has described as “my closest international partner” during his eight-year presidency.
On Thursday, two working meetings are to be held, in which the leaderswill discuss the treatment of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, the situation in Ukraine, climate change and the future of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, the German government said.
In a joint op-ed published on the eve of the president’s visit in the German weekly WirtschaftsWoche, the leaders appealed on behalf of TTIP, the future of which is in doubt after Trump’s election success and protests across Europe, saying “there will not be a return to a world before globalisation”.
On Friday, they will be joined by the British prime minister, Theresa May, the French president, François Hollande, the Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, and Spain’s Mariano Rajoy.
On Thursday morning, the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, warned that Europe was in danger of breaking apart unless Germany and France developed a new basis on which to show their strength.
At an event in Berlin organised by newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, Vallssaid France must continue to make reforms, including lowering corporate tax, but the country needed Germany to make efforts regarding investment.
Merkel and Obama’s working meetings will be followed by a press conference and a gala dinner with guests including the conductor Daniel Barenboim, the Nobel prize-winning German-American biochemist Thomas Südhof, the football manager Jürgen Klinsmann, and the astronauts Thomas Reiter and Alexander Gerst.
Earlier on Thursday, Obama will visit the US embassy and speak to German broadcasters. Large areas of central Berlin have been cordoned off during the visit and the US president will travel to meetings in a 27-car motorcade.
