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News ID: 40051
Publish Date : 28 May 2017 - 20:04

Merkel Announces Europe’s Split With U.S.

FRANKFURT AM MAIN (AFP/AP) -- Europe "must take its fate into its own hands" faced with a western alliance divided by Brexit and Donald Trump's presidency, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday.
"The times in which we could completely depend on others are on the way out. I've experienced that in the last few days," Merkel told a crowd at an election rally in Munich, southern Germany.
"We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands," she added.
While Germany and Europe would strive to remain on good terms with America and Britain, "we have to fight for our own destiny," Merkel went on.
Special emphasis was needed on warm relations between Berlin and newly-elected French President Emmanuel Macron, she said.
The chancellor had just returned from a G7 summit which wound up Saturday without a deal between the U.S. and the other six major advanced nations on upholding the 2015 Paris climate accords.
Merkel on Saturday labeled the result of the "six against one" discussion "very difficult, not to say very unsatisfactory".
The U.S. president tweeted that he would reveal whether or not the U.S. would stick to the global emissions deal -- which he pledged to jettison on the campaign trail -- only next week.
On a previous leg of his first trip abroad as president, Trump had repeated past criticism of NATO allies for failing to meet the defensive alliance's military spending commitment of 2.0% of GDP.
Trump also reportedly described German trade practices as "bad, very bad," in Brussels talks last week, complaining that Europe's largest economy sells too many cars to the U.S.
Sunday's event saw Merkel renew bonds with the Christian Social Union (CSU), Bavarian sister party to her own center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), ahead of a parliamentary vote in September.
Polls show the chancellor, in power since 2005, on course to be re-elected for a fourth term.
Meanwhile, Macron said his now famous white-knuckle handshake showdown with U.S. counterpart Donald Trump was "a moment of truth" - designed to show that he's no pushover.
Macron told a Sunday newspaper in France that "my handshake with him, it wasn't innocent."
Macron added: "One must show that you won't make small concessions, even symbolic ones, but also not over-publicize things, either."
At their first meeting, ahead of a NATO summit in Brussels on Thursday, the two men locked hands for so long that knuckles started turning white. The French leader held the shake for a few seconds more. Both men's jaws seemed to clench.