Merz to take first trip to Washington – DW – 06/04/2025

The German Police Union (GdP) in Berlin is pushing for a countrywide ban on private fireworks around New Year’s, news agency DPA reported, citing the branch chairman.

“The public is ready to rethink how we celebrate New Year’s,” said Stephan Weh, who pointed to results from an online survey in April which showed high levels of support for more stringent restrictions on fireworks.

The poll conducted by Berlin GdP showed that 97% of around 178,000 respondents backed banning of firewords for private use, while 93% supported a ban on sales.

The issue was brought into sharp focus at the beginning of this year when 5 people were killed in firework-related incidents and many more were injured.

A video also went viral showing a man shoot a firework into an apartment in Berlin’s Neukölln district, sparking anger and debate about the conduct of revelers during this time.

Emergency services are frequently attacked and injured in incidents where fireworks are fired deliberately towards them.

Instead of private fireworks, 91% of respondent supported organized public firework displays, with nearly half saying they would attend such events. 
 

The US has doubled steel and aluminium tariff as President Donald Trump ramps up his sweeping import measures since returning to office.

The tariffs — which came into force at 0401 GMT — doubled from 25% to 50% of the goods’ value as Trump seeks to rectify alleged trade imbalances while strengthening US industry.

“We need to come up with negotiated solutions as quickly as possible, because time is running out,” German economy minister Katherina Reiche said Tuesday on the sidelines of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) talks on Wednesday.

The EU has said it “strongly regrets” Trump’s measures, cautioning that it “undermines ongoing efforts to reach a negotiated solution” with the US.

The German Steel Industry Association says the US is the most important sales market for the European steel industry.

Germany’s aluminium industry warned on Wednesday that the tariffs would harm all parties and called for urgent and constructive dialogue with the Trump administration.

The tariffs come amid a climate of increased pressure and uncertainty in the sector.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz will leave for Washington on Wednesday night for his first visit to the US as leader of Europe’s largest economy.

Merz will be holding talks with US President Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday.

Talks are expected to center around ending the war in Ukraine and the Trump administration’s tariffs, among other issues.

The one-on-one discussion will be followed by an Oval Office press conference, which is highly anticipated considering the manner in which both Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa were dealt with during their respective visits.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul called for the preservation of well-established US-German relations on Wednesday. He visited Washington last week where he held talks with US State Secretary Marco Rubio.

“They have made me confident that we can reach agreements in mutual interest even on issues where we have differences of opinion,” German news agency DPA quoted Wadephul as saying at a meeting of former Arthur F. Burns Fellowship scholars in Berlin.

The discovery of World War II-era bombs in Cologne on Monday has led authorities to evacuate an estimated 20,000 people from their homes.

City authorities say its one of the largest evacuations in postwar history and affected areas including the entire old part of the city, 58 hotels, three Rhine bridges, the town hall, the railway station in the district of Deutz, which lies across the Rhine from the city center, museums, a hospital and two care homes.

Bomb disposal is a common occurrence in Cologne, which was one of the most heavily bombed German cities during World War II.

Read about the large scale evacuations in Cologne here.

Guten Morgen from the DW newsroom in Bonn!

We’ll be monitoring developments as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz makes his first visit to the US where he is set to meet with US President Donald Trump.

We’re also covering the evacuation effort in Cologne involving tens of thousands of people as authorities work to defuse World War II era bombs.

We’ll bring you up to speed with headlines, analyses, multimedia content and DW on-the-ground reporting related to events and developments in Germany. Thank you for joining us.