Angela Merkel visits the UK today for one of her final foreign trips as German chancellor ahead of the country’s general election on 26 September, after which she will step down. She will meet Boris Johnson at Chequers and the Queen at Windsor Castle.
Contrary to some speculation, England’s 2-0 defeat of the German team in the European Championship on Tuesday (29 June) is unlikely to cause much awkwardness (Johnson, unlike his German counterpart, has little genuine interest in football). Trickier topics include German restrictions on travel from the UK over the spread of the Delta variant of Covid-19 and the Northern Ireland protocol in the Brexit deal – which caused significant frostiness between the Brits and Germans at the recent G7 summit and on which only a temporary truce has since been reached.
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