German coalition backs foreign minister for presidency

It heaps more responsibility on her at a time when she is nearing an announcement on whether she will run for a record-tying fourth term as chancellor next autumn.

“I can’t imagine that she will make her decision whether she wants to lead Germany again in Europe and the world for another four years dependent on the election of the American president”, Grosse-Broemer said. But her aides have signalled in the past she is moving that way, in the wake of Republican Donald Trump’s US election victory, Britain’s vote to leave the European Union and the rise of populist parties across Europe.

“She will run for the post of chancellor”, Norbert Roettgen, a senior member of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, told U.S. television channel CNN.

Germany had chose to accept hundreds of thousands of people fleeing Syria, Afghanistan and other nations.

Chancellor Angela Merkel described Steinmeier as being “the right candidate for this time”, saying that the foreign minister’s political experience was an important prerequisite for the office of German president.

The 60-year-old Social Democrat is among Germany’s most popular politicians. “She is giving voice, I think, to the kinds of principles that bring people together rather than divide them, and I’m very proud of her for that, and I’m proud of the German people for that”, Obama said on trip to Germany earlier this year.

The Berlin result marked the second recent defeat for Merkel since Germany adopted its open-door refugee policy. Many commentators saw her remarks as a sign that the chancellor was thrusting Germany into the forefront of worldwide politics.

The remarks indicated the German leader is likely to accept – perhaps grudgingly – the mantle of “leader of the real, remaining West and remind Trump of values”, said Die Welt daily. It was anathema to a woman who grew up in communist East Germany, leery of political one-man shows.

She was re-elected Chancellor in 2009 and 2013.

Steinmeier first gained national attention in 1998 when he became chief of staff to Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder.

Obama and Merkel noted that European Union-US trade was the largest between any two partners worldwide, and emphasized that the trans-Atlantic friendship has helped forge a climate accord, provide help for refugees worldwide, form a collective defense under NATO, and strengthen the global fight against the Islamic State extremist group. She has blocked bailouts, rejected proposals, denied pleas and stood up to the rest of Europe.