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Angela Merkel has a job offer from New York – the UN chief is courting the former chancellor

It was to be expected that the former chancellor would receive top-class job offers: the head of the United Nations wanted to win her over for one of his flagship projects. Now her answer is clear.

Photo series with 32 pictures

Former Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) has rejected a job offer from UN Secretary General António Guterres from New York. She had “telephoned the UN Secretary-General last week, thanked him and informed him that she would not accept the offer,” Merkel’s office said on Wednesday at the request of the German Press Agency in Berlin. It remains unclear whether and in what form she may want to volunteer in the future after leaving on December 8th. Merkel was Chancellor for 16 years.

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. On the part of the United Nations, the phone call between Guterres and Merkel was initially not seen as a definitive rejection.

Only rarely photos of Merkel

According to dpa information from UN circles, Guterres Merkel had also made the offer by letter. The Advisory Board on Global Public Goods is one of Guterres’ flagship projects on UN reform. In his 2021 report on transforming the UN, he had written: “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.

After 16 years in government, Merkel withdrew from active politics on December 8th when her SPD successor, Olaf Scholz, was sworn in. Since then, photos of her have rarely surfaced. The ex-Chancellor was seen shopping for groceries in Berlin’s Kaufhaus des Westens in the week after the end of her term in office. A photo published in the “Bild” newspaper at the time shows her in a typical blazer with black pants and black mouth and nose protection. Merkel attended the Berlin Philharmonic’s New Year’s Eve concert together with her husband Joachim Sauer.

Merkel writes a book

Little is known about Merkel’s future plans. According to her longtime office manager and confidant Beate Baumann, she is planning an autobiography. Baumann told the “Spiegel” in December: “The chancellor doesn’t want to recount her entire life. She would like to explain her key political decisions in her own words, and with reference to her life.” The magazine wrote that the book will be a joint project by Merkel and Baumann, who have been working together for almost 30 years. According to Baumann, it is planned for two to three years, and there is no publisher yet.

Merkel herself had expressed reservations about her plans before the end of her term in office. In September, at the 750th anniversary of her hometown of Templin in the Uckermark, when asked whether she would come more often in the future, she answered curtly: “Definitely.” The ex-Chancellor owns a weekend house there. It is known that she likes to take care of the garden herself there.

“Then I’ll sleep a little”

During her farewell visit to the United States in July, Merkel said she wanted to take a break after her term in office and think about “what really interests me.” In the past 16 years she has had little time for this. “And then maybe I’ll try to read something, then my eyes will close because I’m tired, then I’ll sleep a bit and then we’ll see.”

She told the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper” in October: “Now I’m making sure that a few things follow that I missed out on as Chancellor, maybe travel or read a bit or just have some leisure knowing that not in the next twenty minutes something revolutionary can happen again. I’m looking forward to that.”

First appearance possibly on February 13th

Since leaving the Chancellery, Merkel has been working in an office in a Bundestag building. According to information from participants at the time, when she said goodbye to the Union faction in December, she said she was moving into “Margot Honecker’s office” on Unter den Linden – which was also where Helmut Kohl’s office was when he was former chancellor. The wife of the then GDR head of state and party leader Erich Honecker had resided in the GDR on Unter den Linden.

Merkel is likely to have her first public political appearance after the end of her term on February 13. The CDU parliamentary group in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has nominated the former chancellor for the federal assembly that will elect the next federal president. In all likelihood, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will be confirmed for a second term. Merkel had her Bundestag constituency in Western Pomerania.

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