German lawmakers elect weakened Angela Merkel for her fourth term

German lawmakers voted on Wednesday to re-elect Angela Merkel as chancellor for a fourth, and likely final, term that may prove her most challenging yet as she takes charge of a fragile coalition with her personal standing diminished.

Lawmakers voted by 364 to 315, with nine abstentions, in favour of re-electing Merkel, a humbling start as the coalition of her conservatives and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) has 399 votes in the Bundestag lower house of parliament.
"I accept the vote," a beaming Merkel, 63, told lawmakers.
In office since 2005, she has dominated Germany's political landscape and steered the European Union through economic crisis.

But her authority was dented by her decision in 2015 to commit Germany to an open-door policy on migration, resulting in an influx of more than one million people.

US should exclude EU from tariffs to defuse trade dispute: Angela Merkel

German Chancellor Angela Merkel today voiced concern over US President Donald Trump's decision to impose hefty tariffs on aluminium and steel imports, and called for talks to defuse the escalating row.
"We see with concern the tariff hikes for specific products," the leader of Europe's biggest economy said, adding that Germany backs the EU in "seeking dialogue with the United States, but also with countries that could be affected, like China."
She stressed that "no one can win in such a race to the bottom", adding that "it would be best if we could be exempted" from the tariffs.

Donald Trump's trade war will only produce losers, warns auto industry

Carmakers and U. S. auto dealers are using a similar refrain to push back against U. S. President Donald Trump’s talk of a trade war: Everyone will suffer if the rhetoric keeps ratcheting up.
“Only losers” will emerge from the U. S. and European Union battling one another with tariffs, said Bernhard Mattes, the president of German auto-industry lobby VDA, which represents carmakers including Volkswagen AG and BMW AG.

Volvo Cars’s chief executive officer and a group representing American auto dealers echoed the sentiment almost verbatim in the wake of a tit-for-tat between Trump and the European Commission’s Jean-Claude Juncker. The comments suggest the auto industry could form a unified front after the president tweeted he could slap levies on BMWs, Audis and other cars shipped from Europe if the U. S.’s planned tariffs on imported steel and aluminum are met with retaliation.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel embarks on new talks to form government

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and the centre-left Social Democrats are starting talks on forming a new government, attempting to break an impasse more than three months after the country's election.

Merkel's conservative Union bloc and the Social Democrats have run Germany together for the past four years. But the Social Democrats vowed to go into opposition after a disastrous election result September 24, and only reluctantly reconsidered after Merkel's attempt to build a coalition with two smaller parties collapsed in November.

The effort to form a government has already become post- World War II Germany's longest. Leaders aim to decide by Friday whether there's enough common ground to move on to formal coalition negotiations, which would require approval by a Social Democrat congress.
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Kuka plans for robot domination in China and your garage

German industrial giant Kuka is the world’s largest producer of robots used to make automobiles, with its signature orange crane-like bots a fixture in automated car factories across the globe. So why is Chairman and Chief Executive Till Reuter worried?

The reason is simple enough: Growth in robots for all industries other than automotive is up more than 10 percent; that compares to just 3-5 percent for the car industry, he says. Kuka’s auto business has fallen from 80 percent of robot revenues, when he took over the company in 2009, to around 50 percent today, Reuter notes.  Now this 120-year-old company, which in January became just under 95 percent-owned by China’s Midea, the world’s largest appliance maker, is aiming to pull off a big transformation that, if successful, will take it into faster-growing robot markets.

That means smaller-sized and nimble robots for electronics manufacturing and logistics warehouses. Also on the drawing board are machines that could handle plugging in electric vehicles for owners, or even allow the elderly to live independently at home later in life, Reuter said in an interview in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou earlier this month.

“We want to keep number one in automotive [but] we see that the higher growth is coming out of other industries and other sectors.” For example, one large market that will become “even bigger in the future, will be the production of mobile phones, handhelds, and iPads,” he says. Reuter is referring to robots that have a payload of six kilograms or less — the maximum weight they can pick up and manipulate — and are capable of carrying out much more delicate assembly tasks.

China will be key to realising Kuka’s diversification strategy.  It’s the world’s largest and fastest-growing automation market. Sales of robots in China, which amount to about one-third of the global demand, grew by 27 percent last year, compared to just 12 percent in Europe and 8 percent in the Americas, according to the International Federation of Robotics.
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Political attack? German Mayor Hollstein stabbed for sheltering refugees

A German Mayor known for his welcoming stance towards refugees has been seriously injured in a knife attack which authorities said was likely politically motivated.

Andreas Hollstein, the 54-year-old conservative Mayor of west German town of Altena, was stabbed in the neck at a kebab shop on Monday evening, the Independent reported.

The attacker, identified as a 56-year-old German man and described by local media as drunk, approached Hollstein and asked whether he was the town's Mayor before loudly criticizing his migrant policies and slicing his neck with a 30-centimetre blade.

The assailant was overpowered by people at the scene.

Hollstein was taken to the hospital but discharged the same day. "I was very lucky. I had some hands-on people by my side and am happy that I'm still alive," the Mayor told reporters on Tuesday.

Hollstein, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, gained national renown and won an award for his open migrant policies in Altena, often pushing to take in more people than required by official quotas.

According to the Mayor, before launching the attack his assailant said: "You're letting me die of thirst, but you bring 200 refugees to Altena."
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Merkel to ask EU to end Turkey membership talks amid tense ties with Ankara

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday that she would ask the European Union to call off membership talks with Turkey, amid escalating tensions between Berlin and Ankara.

"I don't see them ever joining and I had never believed that it would happen," she said during a televised debate with Martin Schulz, her Social Democratic rival in elections later this month.

She added that she would speak with her EU counterparts to see if "we can end these membership talks".

Merkel's tough stance came after Turkey arrested two more German citizens this past week "for political reasons", infuriating Berlin.

The arrests brought the number of German political prisoners in Turkish custody to 12, at a time when ties between the two NATO allies were already at an all-time low.

The plunge in relations began after Berlin sharply criticised Ankara over the crackdown that followed last year's failed coup attempt.
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G20 Summit 2017: Trump's confusion on key issues stumps Merkel, Trudeau

During a difficult visit to Europe Donald Trump appeared out of sync with traditional allies, struggling to show that unorthodox strategies toward rival powers Russia and China can deliver results.

At one point Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and German Chancellor Angela Merkel exchanged a knowing glance as the US president veered off on another tangent.

What were to be remarks about women entrepreneurs had become a Trumpian soliloquy on his daughter Ivanka's merits and his paternal failings.

"If she weren't my daughter it would be so much easier for her," Trump said. "It might be the only bad thing going for her."

A few feet away, Merkel and Trudeau's nervy laughs were corporal acknowledgment that Trump's political peers are still unsure how to take the mercurial 71-year-old.

Throughout the meeting there was a sense the president of the United States, leader of the so-called "indispensable nation," has shifted positions, leaving everyone else struggling to correct.

In Warsaw, on the first stop of his four-day trip, Trump sought to reassert his claim to lead the free world.

Like a king riding along the cavalry frontline, he sounded the charge against terrorism and bureaucracy, which he painted as threats to Christian civilisation.

He embraced allies by affirming his commitment to NATO's mutual defense clause, satisfying long-standing demands to be clearer about the alliance.
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G20 Summit: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin discuss Ukraine, Syria, terrorism

US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin held their first ever and much-anticipated sit-down discussion here on Friday, focussing on the situation in Ukraine and Syria, fight against terrorism and cyber security, on the sidelines of the G20 summit here.

The meeting lasted about 2 hours and 20 minutes, according to Russian news agency Sputnik.

"I had a very lengthy conversation with the President of the United States. There were a lot of issues such as Ukraine, Syria, other problems, some bilateral issues," Putin said at the beginning of his meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Xinhua news agency reported.

"We again returned to the issues of fighting terrorism and cyber security," Putin added.

The Trump-Putin formal meeting came hours after a brief encounter upon arrival at the Hamburg summit, during which they shook hands and exchanged a few words.

Trump began their meeting by saying: "President Putin and I have been discussing various things. And I think it is going very well."

"We look forward to a lot of very positive things happening for Russia, for the United States and for everybody concerned. And it is an honor to be with you," Trump said.

"I'm delighted to meet you personally, and I hope our meeting will bring results," Putin said after shaking hands with Trump.

Following the meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the Putin-Trump meeting was constructive and confirmed desire to search for mutually-beneficial agreements, according to Sputnik.
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How Angela Merkel remains one of world's most successful political leaders

There are very few political leaders who have perfected the art of having their political cake and eating it too. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is one of these.

Internationally, she is renowned as the leader of Europe who seemingly single-handedly rehabilitated Germany’s international reputation by welcoming refugees with the catchphrase “we can do it”. With electoral pressure building, however, she publicly distanced herself from this stance as the CDU/CSU party faithful sent back the message that they were not so sure.

Now, by accepting their demand for a Bundestag vote, she has outflanked Martin Schulz’s Social Democrats by securing the passage of marriage equality as one of her government’s achievements, despite openly voting against it herself. The issue has been effectively neutralised.

Before marriage equality had arisen as an issue, Merkel had also done the same with immigration and the hot-button issue of asylum seekers. As one report put it, Merkel’s “summer of welcome” that saw asylum seekers march across Europe to reach the safe-haven of Germany has been followed by a long winter of conservative base-pleasing changes to the country’s political asylum laws. These have made it much tougher to successfully claim refugee status and much easier for unsuccessful asylum seekers to be deported to countries such as Afghanistan.

Pushed by circumstances to the centre, Merkel’s CDU/CSU coalition has now steered back to the right on refugees. Given her 2010 statement that multiculturalism has “utterly failed”, this seems to be where she would prefer it to stay.

Merkel, who has been German chancellor for a remarkable 12 years, is facing an election in September. Electorally, her right-ward shift on migration has largely defused the threat from Germany’s rabidly anti-immigration, far-right “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) party, which has also been hit hard by internal divisions.
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Donald Trump, Angela Merkel to meet ahead of G20 talks

US President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel plan to meet Thursday for what are expected to be tricky talks on the eve of a Group of 20 summit in Hamburg.

Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said the meeting would come before the summit, "most probably in the early evening of Thursday".

The pair are also scheduled to talk by telephone today, Trump said in a tweet.

Transatlantic differences on climate change, trade, defence spending and refugees hang over the July 7-8 meeting of the world's major industrialised and emerging economies.

Last week Merkel met with key European leaders and vowed to make a stand for climate protection and open markets at the meeting with Trump, who has said he will take the US out of the Paris climate deal and pursue a protectionist "America First" policy.

Merkel said that "the differences are obvious and it would be dishonest to try to cover that up. That I won't do."

She also said the US exit from the 2015 Paris climate pact had made Europe "more determined than ever" to make the accord a success.

Today, presenting her party's election platform, she predicted "a whole series of thorny issues" at the G20.

"We know the positions of the US government and I do not expect them to disappear on a two-day trip to Hamburg," the chancellor said.

She warned against high expectations, noting that the summit's final communique has to be "approved unanimously".
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German plans to send migrant children to reception centres in Morocco

In a controversial move, Germany is considering plans to open two reception centres in Morocco for repatriated children. According to a leaked document of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees cited by a German newspaper, the centres would have space to receive 200 Moroccan minors and would be run in collaboration with Moroccan non-governmental organisations.

The conditions under which these reception centres would operate have not been specified in detail. But the aim appears to be to allow the government to deport minors without breaching German immigration law. The German Residence Act specifies that in order to deport an unaccompanied foreign minor, the deporting authority must ensure that the minor is either “handed over to a member of his or her family, to a person possessing the right of care and custody or to an appropriate reception centre”.

This plan tallies with German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s wider strategy to accelerate the removal of irregular migrants from German territory.

In 2016, Germany and Morocco agreed to collaborate on deporting Moroccan migrants. The German government has also tried to pass a contested law declaring Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria “safe countries of origin” to ease the expulsion of rejected asylum seekers. The law was approved by the German Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, in 2016. But it was then rejected by the upper house, the Bundesrat, in 2017 after opposition parties claimed that arguments to define these countries as “safe” were too weak.

Spain has tried this before

Resorting to reception centres to repatriate Moroccan unaccompanied minors evokes a similar idea launched by Spain in 2005.

Reception centres were meant to accompany the implementation of the memorandum of understanding signed between Morocco and Spain in 2003 over the repatriation of unaccompanied minors. Since the late 1990s, in fact, a flow of Moroccan children has tried to reach Spain by crossing the Gibraltar Strait or by reaching the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla.
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As US influence wanes, Germany has the chance to step into the spotlight

Despite such efforts to reassure allies, concerns remain that the US has taken an isolationist turn. The Trump administration has failed to fill numerous international positions, proposed cuts to the State Department’s budget and seen several members of its diplomatic corps resign.

On May 28, German Chancellor Angela Merkel plainly expressed her view that America is no longer a reliable international partner. In a noteworthy speech in Munich, she recast Trump’s “America first” doctrine in a European light, saying that “we Europeans really must take our fate into our own hands”.

Germany in the lead?
Though it’s likely a temporary vacuum, American withdrawal from the international stage may present an opportunity for countries to play a larger global role, defending the liberal world order while the United States is on a break. Merkel’s pointed response to Trump’s wavering signals on NATO and the Paris accord suggests that Germany may be among them.

But it seems unlikely that even a large and economically strong European country will be able to wield international influence across the many areas the US has traditionally dominated. To become a truly global player, Germany would likely need to leverage the power of a supra-national platform such as the European Union.
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Improve lives instead of building walls: Merkel's jibe at Trump

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said during a state visit to Mexico that countries should focus on improving life for people fleeing their homes rather than building walls.

Merkel spoke yesterday in response to a question about migration. She was speaking of Europe's handling of migrants from Africa and Syria, but coming in Mexico the parallels to US President Donald Trump's call to wall the entire US-Mexico border were unavoidable.

Merkel has been an outspoken advocate of more generous migrant policies in Europe. She says countries must work against what causes people to abandon their homes.

The US Congress denied Trump's initial request of USD 2.6 billion to begin building a stretch of border wall. His first full budget requests USD 1.6 billion for about 74 miles of new and replacement wall.
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Donald Trump tells Merkel he is not an isolationist; calls for 'fair trade'

President Donald Trump on Friday dismissed the notion that he was an "isolationist" in his policies, as he held talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and asserted that Germany and the US must work together towards fair and reciprocal trade policies.

"My administration is in the process of rebuilding the American industrial base. A stronger America is in the interest, believe me, of the world as a whole," Trump told reporters at a joint news conference with the visiting German Chancellor Merkel.

Germany and the United States, he said, must work together towards fair and reciprocal trade policies that benefit people of both the countries.

"Millions of hard-working US citizens have been left behind by international commerce, and together, we can shape a future where all of our citizens have a path to financial security. The United States will respect historic institutions and we will also recognise the right of free people to manage their own destiny," Trump said.

On immigration, another issue dividing Merkel and the new US president, Trump said immigration was a "privilege" and not a "right".

Responding to a question, Trump refuted the impression that he is an isolationist.

"I don't believe in an isolationist policy. But I also believe a policy of trade should be a fair policy. The United States has been treated very, very unfairly by many countries over the years. That's going to stop. But I'm not an isolationist," he said.

"I'm a free trader, but I'm also a fair trader. Our free trade has led to a lot of bad things happening. You look at the deficits that we have, and you look at all of the accumulation of debt. We're a very powerful country. We're a very strong country," said the US President.(READ MORE)

Donald Trump credits Twitter for becoming US President

US President Donald Trump said on Friday that he has reached the position where he is now because of Twitter and the social media platform helps him get around the media.

"(I) probably wouldn't be here right now, but very seldom. We have a tremendous group of people that listen and I can get around the media when the media doesn't tell the truth, so I like that," Trump told reporters at a joint White House news conference with visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Trump was responding to a question over whether he ever regretted his tweets.

"By the way, my second question, are there from time to time tweets that you regret," a German reporter asked.

Sharing the dais with Merkel, Trump said he and the German leader probably shared something when it came to the previous Obama Administration.

He was responding to a question on wiretapping.

"As far as wiretapping, I guess by this past administration, at least we have something in common, perhaps," Trump said.

"And just to finish your question, we said nothing. All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television. I didn't make an opinion on it," Trump said. (READ MORE)