Merkel stands up for multilateralism at Davos, promises closer EU-China ties

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday that Germany will help advance the European Union's cooperation with China on three major issues when her country assumes the EU presidency in the second half of the year.

In her 12th address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Merkel said that for the first time in September in the German city of Leipzig, there will be an EU-China summit to be attended by all the 27 EU member states.

On top of the agenda is the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment between the EU and China, a negotiation that was launched in 2013. "I hope we will be able to finalize it by 2020," she said.

Merkel, who devoted the biggest part of her speech to climate change, said the EU also will discuss with China how to fight climate change.
She highlighted China's national carbon trading plan and the EU's Emissions Trading System (ETS), saying that the two can be linked to each other. "We can actually be a role model for the world," she said.

Merkel noted the EU also will talk with China on cooperation in third country market, given that China is so active in Africa and the EU wants to be active globally. "Perhaps we can lay down norms and standards, joint standards" said Merkel, who has visited China 12 times since becoming chancellor in 2005.

In her wide-ranging speech, Merkel underscored her support for multilateralism.

"We as Europeans, and I can say this for Germany, we'll stand up for multilateralism. We'll stand up for multilateral organizations," she said, a sharp contrast to the message in the speech by US President Donald Trump in the same hall two days earlier.

Merkel said that the most effective way to create global prosperity is the multilateral way.

"There is a whole host of opportunities open to us, but we should not be looking inward and going it alone. That will be a totally wrong lesson for all the years after the Second World War," she said.

"I don't want a new bipolarity in the world," she told Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, who sat down with her for a short Q&A session after her speech.

In her speech at the American Academy in Berlin on Tuesday, Merkel urged Western nations to include China in their multilateral system and treat China equally rather than free it out and risk slipping into a Cold War-style bipolar order, according to the Reuters.

On Thursday, Merkel said that Germany had made a mistake during the 2015 refugee crisis, not by welcoming asylum-seekers fleeing conflict, but by not preparing for their arrival as civil conflicts began engulfing the Middle East and northern Africa.

"The mistake was not to have paid attention to create an environment where people can stay in their own country," she said.

The German chancellor warned that the mistake should not be repeated with Libya, where the conflict between the UN-backed government and rebel troops is affecting neighbor countries.

Germany hosted a Libya peace summit in Berlin on Sunday, where participants agree to respect arms embargo in a bid to deescalate the conflict.

On Thursday, Merkel called for people to talk to those whom they disagree with.

She lamented that "people seem to no longer wish to talk to one another – that there is no possibility to build a bridge between these different views – that is something that fills me with grave concern."

"When we now have a world where perhaps lack of speech is even more pronounced than during the Cold War – where we had an orderly channel of communication between the different sides," she said.

"Then I can only plead: Even if you find it so difficult to talk to the other person then please don't abandon this. Otherwise you will be in your digital bubble… you will be talking to people of the same view…and that leads us right into catastrophe," Merkel said.