The new German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock traveled to Paris and Brussels to start work.

After arriving in Paris on Wednesday evening, she said that she wanted to convey the message that “our partners in the European Union” could “rely on the new federal government”.

Baerbock is expected in Warsaw on Friday.

In Paris she met the French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, in Brussels she has meetings with the EU’s foreign affairs officer, Josep Borrell, with the EU commissioner for home affairs, Ylva Johansson, and with the American special envoy for climate issues, John Kerry Calendar.

Johannes Leithäuser

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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Baerbock said she wanted to "listen above all" on her inaugural visits. She assured that the new federal government would "not pursue its ideas and interests over the heads of our neighbors, and certainly not at their expense". Germany's most important interest is a "strong and united Europe". Especially with controversial topics, it is important to always “think into the perspective and history of the other”.

Without explicitly mentioning Poland or Hungary, with whom the EU is in dispute on questions of the rule of law, Baerbock said that the prerequisite for a strong Europe is that the EU take its basic values ​​seriously: “We cannot allow this, especially when it comes to the rule of law and human rights that Europe's foundations are crumbling. "She said she wanted to support the French EU Council Presidency from January onwards" to make Europe more sovereign and capable of acting.

In the federal government's new division of responsibilities, the Federal Foreign Office is also responsible for climate issues in external relations; the relevant departments have been relocated from the Ministry of the Environment to the Foreign Office.

In view of her meeting with Kerry, Baerbock said that she wanted to "give international climate policy the place it deserves on the diplomatic agenda from day one - right at the top".

The task of diplomacy is to contain crises and to solve them;

no crisis is more threatening for the future of mankind than the climate crisis.