Merz heads to Asia as Greens leader Dröge calls for an "alliance of counterweight"
The chancellor travels to Singapore, Japan and South Korea for five days from Monday. The Greens want him to use the trip to build alliances protecting a rules-based international order.
Archive image · Photo: 内閣広報室 / Cabinet Public Affairs Office / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) sets off on Monday on a five-day trip to Singapore, Japan and South Korea. Greens parliamentary leader Katharina Dröge urged him to forge an "alliance of counterweight" there, aimed at Russia, China and the United States. With a Trump administration breaking the international order, Putin's war in Ukraine and China's influence, Europe needed "reliable partners", she told the RND newspaper network.
Merz should use the trip to deepen strategic partnerships and "actively promote this vision and initiate concrete steps to implement it", Dröge said. She also called for "close coordination" with European partners, describing Japan, South Korea and Singapore as central partners for this approach.
At the same time, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier is travelling to China this week for a state visit. Merz visited the country at the end of February and now regularly criticises "unfair trade practices". According to t-online columnist Johannes Bebermeier, Europe's trade deficit with China amounts to almost one billion euros a day.