Former Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) has rejected a job offer from UN Secretary General António Guterres from New York. Merkel “phoned the UN Secretary-General last week, thanked him and informed him that she would not accept the offer,” Merkel’s office told the German Press Agency in Berlin on Wednesday.
Guterres had offered the 67-year-old the chair of a high-level advisory body on global public goods that could potentially serve the entire world population across national borders. Examples of global public goods are the ozone layer, but also, depending on the definition, internationally applicable regulations such as those on flight safety and global trade.
Angela Merkel: The job offer came by letter
Accordingly, Guterres made the offer in a letter to Merkel – who retired last year after 16 years as German head of government. At the United Nations, however, the likelihood that she will accept the job offer from the UN headquarters on New York’s East River is considered to be rather low. An answer from Merkel is not yet available, it said. Officially, representatives of the United Nations did not want to comment on the offer.
The Advisory Board on Global Public Goods is one of Guterres’ flagship projects on United Nations reform in his second term, which began in early January. In his report on transforming the UN last year, the secretary-general wrote: “I will ask a high-level advisory board, led by former leaders, to identify global public goods and other areas of common concern where improvements in governance are most urgently needed required are.”
According to Guterres, the corona pandemic has revealed major gaps in international cooperation. The envisaged advisory body should provide impetus for renewing practices and principles for action on a global level.
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