Martin Schulz, the SPD (centre-left) candidate running against Angela Merkel for the German Chancellorship, isn’t the only senior German politician with harsh words for Trump.
SPIEGEL ONLINE reports that earlier today Sigmar Gabriel (SPD), the German Foreign Minister and former Vice Chancellor, took part in a roundtable on refugees and migration. Afterwards he criticized the U.S. unusually sharply. According to a statement by the Foreign Office, he said that the renunciation of the Western policy consensus by the new U.S. administration only increases the challenges posed by migration. There are, he said, three big factors driving migration: climate change, war, and political and religious persecution, and ‘these problems are only increased by the new American isolationism.’
He noted that the Trump administration wants to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, pour arms into the crisis regions, and deny entry to people of certain religions. These policies ‘endanger peace in Europe,’ and ‘the shortsighted policies of the American administration stand against the interests of the European Union.’ He added a warning to Europeans: ‘If Europeans do not resolutely oppose this today, the flow of immigrants to Europe will increase further. Anyone who does not oppose this U.S. policy becomes complicit.’
Europeans must instead fight for more climate protection, fewer weapons, and religious enlightenment or face further destabilization of the Near East and Africa, he said. ‘Not a single problem will be solved by outdated recipes like closing borders and building walls.’
More generally, Gabriel denied the United States under President Trump a leading rôle in the Western community of shared values, speaking of the ‘loss of the United States as an important nation.’ He said that the weekend wasn’t just a matter of an unsuccessful G7 summit: ‘Unfortunately, that is a sign of the shift in the world’s balance of power. The West is getting somewhat smaller.’
Katja Kipping, one of the two co-chairs of Die Linke (The Left), was, unsurprisingly, even blunter. In an interview with Bild she said that Germany must stop displaying ‘moral cowardice towards the USA.’ Of his loutish shoving of Montegro’s Prime Minister Duško Marković at the NATO meeting she said: ‘It shows that Trump has a problem and urgently needs professional help. The kindest thing that I can think concerning Trump is that he is an infantile narcissist.’ And Dietmar Bartsch, parliamentary co-leader of Die Linke (with Sahra Wagenknecht) said that relations with the USA had reached a nadir, and that the G7 summit had resulted in nothing but expenses.