Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who left office in early December, has declined a job offer from UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, her office said on Wednesday.
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Angela Merkel “telephoned the UN Secretary-General about this last week, thanked him and let him know that she would not accept the offer,” her office told AFP. confirming press information.
His services did not specify what the exact nature of the United Nations proposal was.
But according to sources within the organization, it was a question of taking the head of a council composed of different personalities, to deal with the “common agenda” at the UN proposed at the end of 2021 by Antonio Guterres, “designed to strengthen and accelerate multilateral agreements”.
This largely ceremonial position would not have been based in New York.
Angela Merkel, who had long announced her withdrawal after the German legislative elections in September 2021, repeated on several occasions that she did not wish to take on any new function after her departure from the chancellery.
Since she definitively left the political scene on December 8, Angela Merkel, 67, has devoted herself in particular to writing her political memoirs with her former adviser and close collaborator, Beate Baumann.
This writing project, which aims to explain the main political decisions taken by Mrs. Merkel during her 16 years in power, is supposed to last two or three years, according to the adviser.
A Member of Parliament for more than 30 years, the former Chancellor now has an office in the premises of the Bundestag.