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PARIS — German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is pulling out of a space summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Wednesday and Thursday.
A spokesperson for Merz said Monday that he was canceling his trip because of his busy agenda this week, just hours after the chancellor’s party suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the far-right Alternative for Germany in the Saxony-Anhalt state election .
Merz is set to meet with with European Council President António Costa and speak at the Bundestag on Wednesday, while on Thursday he will have meetings with United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and with German diplomats.
The German leader’s absence is yet another blow to a summit that several participants criticized as directionless and poorly organized. Last week, top U.S. space companies, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX, decided to ditch the event after the White House pressured American companies to back out .
The French government had repeatedly framed the international space summit as an event co-chaired with Germany, though the occasion was largely billed online as belonging to France. On Friday, an Elysée official repeated that the event would be chaired by both France and Germany.
A German diplomat, granted anonymity to speak candidly about Merz’s last-minute cancelation, confirmed that the event will still be co-chaired by Berlin despite the chancellor’s absence.
German Minister for Research, Technology and Space Dorothee Bär and her French counterpart, Philippe Baptiste, are set to open the event. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius is slated to speak at a panel, while European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is also set to deliver a major speech at the summit.
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