BERLIN, Feb 13 (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 vote by secret ballot of the college of electors 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 attachment to good relations between the country’s major parties and his re-election is considered 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 election result was announced, he promised to fight for democracy while blaming Russia for threatening Europe with 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 Democrat Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Frank-Walter Steinmeier was then Minister of Foreign Affairs to Angela Merkel.
The electoral college called which re-elected him on Sunday brings together the members of the Federal Parliament, several hundred elected officials from the Länder and representatives of civil society. Among the participants in the ballot thus appeared Angela Merkel but also the medical director of the pharmaceutical laboratory BioNTech, Özlem Türeci, 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 to promote our European values,” he said in a message posted on Twitter.
(Report Tom Sims and Andrea Rinke, French version Marc Angrand)