BERLIN (Reuters) – Frank-Walter Steinmeier was elected on Sunday for a second five-year term as president of the Federal Republic of Germany, a largely ceremonial post.
The result of the secret ballot vote of the college of major readers is not a surprise since most of the main political parties in the country had previously announced their support for the reappointment of the outgoing president.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier is appreciated for his commitment to good relations between the country’s major parties and his re-election is seen as a guarantee of continuity in a country which changed chancellor last year after 16 years of mandates from Angela Merkel and has not yet emerged from the coronavirus crisis.
In a speech delivered just after the announcement of the election results, he promised to fight for democracy while accusing Russia of threatening Europe with an armed conflict in Ukraine.
“I can only warn” Russian President Vladimir Putin, he said. “Don’t underestimate the power of democracy.”
Former right-hand man of the former social-democratic chancellor Gerhard Schrder, Frank-Walter Steinmeier was then Minister of Foreign Affairs to Angela Merkel.
The electoral college called which re-elected him on Sunday brings together members of the Federal Parliament, several hundred elected officials from the Lnder and representatives of civil society. Among the participants in the ballot thus figured Angela Merkel but also the medical director of the pharmaceutical laboratory BioNTech, zlem Treci, or even the most famous “drag queen” of Berlin, Gloria Viagra.
French President Emmanuel Macron was one of the first foreign officials to congratulate his counterpart. “Together, let’s continue to nurture the precious friendship that unites Germany and France and promote our European values,” he said in a message posted on Twitter.
(Report Tom Sims and Andrea Rinke, French version Marc Angrand)