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Charles during his speech in the Bundestag in November 2020
Photo: CLEMENS BILAN/POOL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Germany gets a royal visit from Great Britain: King Charles III.
travels to Berlin at the end of March and then wants to give a speech in the Bundestag.
"I am pleased that the British leader, King Charles III.
will speak in the Bundestag, "said Katja Mast, First Parliamentary Secretary of the SPD parliamentary group, on Thursday of the dpa news agency.
»The German-British friendship is of particular importance for Europe and the world, especially after Brexit and in times of Putin’s imperialist war of aggression in Ukraine, which violates international law.«
Initially, there was no confirmation from the palace in London for the visit, which Charles and his wife Queen Camilla are said to also lead to Hamburg.
The silence is no exception, royal dates are traditionally announced a few days before for security reasons.
Travel plans would be announced in due course, a spokeswoman said weeks ago.
The speech in the Bundestag is planned for March 30, as previously reported by the news portal The Pioneer.
According to information from the magazine "Stern" from mid-January, Charles and Camilla want to be in Germany from March 29th to 31st and then also visit Hamburg.
Speech in German during the 2020 visit
Criticism came from the first parliamentary secretary of the parliamentary group Die Linke, Jan Korte.
»It is a good tradition that no head of state has spoken in the Bundestag who has not been elected.
And we shouldn't change that either," he stressed.
Even Pope Benedict, who spoke in the Bundestag on September 22, 2011, was "elected in a vote among 115 men from his organization."
Charles has been the British monarch since the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, on September 8, 2022.
His coronation is scheduled for May 6th.
As heir to the throne, Charles has often been a guest in Germany - most recently on the day of national mourning in November 2020. At the central commemoration in the Bundestag, he evoked the deep partnership between Great Britain and Germany in German.
According to French media reports, Germany is not Charles' first stop on what is now his first trip abroad as a monarch.
Accordingly, the king wants to visit Paris beforehand, to which French President Emmanuel Macron had invited him on the sidelines of the Queen's state funeral.
As the newspaper "Parisien" wrote in January, a visit by the king to the French parliament is also on the agenda, as is a visit to the Paris mayor, Anne Hidalgo.
There is no official confirmation of this either.
It was originally expected that Charles would visit a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, such as Australia or Jamaica, as his first destination.
However, there are currently no indications of this.
In his first few months in office, Charles has visited numerous locations in the UK and also has a busy schedule in London.
On Wednesday he met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an audience at Buckingham Palace.
kfr/dpa
