French President Emmanuel Macron is scheduled to meet Friedrich Merz, Germany’s likely next chancellor, in Berlin on Tuesday, according to Euractiv.
The meeting comes ahead of the upcoming European Council summit and follows Macron’s consultation with Merz in Paris last month after the French president’s meeting with US President Donald Trump in Washington.
Macron will also meet with the incumbent German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat (SPD), to prepare for the Brussels summit. The discussions are expected to cover the situation in Ukraine, particularly in light of recent talks on a potential ceasefire, as well as Europe’s future security architecture.
Merz is poised to take over as chancellor once his bloc concludes coalition negotiations with the SPD. Until then, Scholz remains formally in charge of government business, with convention dictating close coordination between the incumbent and the likely future head of government on major decisions that will impact the next administration.
A German government spokesperson noted on Friday that Scholz and Merz are also due to coordinate before the Brussels summit, emphasising that the current and future governments will act in a unified manner.
The CDU spokesperson could not confirm whether Merz would participate in the gathering of leaders from the European People’s Party (EPP) before the summit, as he did at the last extraordinary summit earlier this month.
