Albares travels to Germany, one of the countries most opposed to Spain’s proposal to suspend the EU-Israel Agreement

Eduardo González Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares will travel to Berlin this Wednesday, May 20, for a working meeting with his German counterpart, Johann Wadephul, "with the aim of strengthening the positive state of bilateral relations," the Ministry reported in a brief press release. This meeting, which comes almost a year after their meeting in Madrid in May 2025, "will allow the ministers to address issues on the European and international agenda, such as the defense of multilateralism and international law, the need to improve the European Union's capacity for action, and the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East," the statement continued. At the aforementioned meeting last year, Wadephul expressly rejected the arms embargo on Israel proposed by Spain because Germany “does not forget its responsibility” for the Holocaust during World War II and, therefore, considers the existence of the State of Israel as “part of its raison d'être.” “No other country has such a responsibility as Germany does to the past. We cannot forget what happened in the 20th century, those twelve terrible years in which, on an industrial scale, there was an attempt to murder all the Jews, and I have to assume that responsibility and live up to it,” he warned at the joint press conference. Separately, on that occasion, Albares again supported the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement due to human rights violations, but Wadephul merely announced that his country would be willing to “participate in the debate” on this issue once the High Representative, Kaja Kallas, concludes her review of the agreement's implementation by Benjamin Netanyahu's government. However, Johann Wadephul himself has repeatedly and openly expressed his opposition to the total or partial suspension of the Agreement, deeming it “inappropriate.” Albares’s trip to Berlin also comes two and a half months after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz stood impassively in the foreground as US President Donald Trump threatened to “cut off all trade with Spain” in retaliation for the Pedro Sánchez government’s decision not to allow the use of the Morón and Rota military bases for the offensive against Iran. A couple of days later, Albares conveyed to Wadephul his “surprise” at the Chancellor’s lack of reaction. “When you share a currency, a common trade policy, and a common market with another country, you expect the same solidarity that Spain has shown, for example, with Denmark, when there have been tariff threats due to Denmark's desire to withdraw its territorial integrity in Greenland, or the solidarity that Spain expresses with the countries on the eastern flank,” he told Spanish Television. Two weeks after that incident, Pedro Sánchez affirmed in Brussels that Spain maintains “the best of relations with Germany.” “What is important, what is relevant to me, and I want to thank Chancellor Merz for this, is that in the private meeting he had with President Donald Trump, he explained the solidarity of Europe, and of course also of Germany, with Spain,” and that he made it clear that trade policy “is in the hands of Europeans and not in the hands of national governments,” he declared upon arriving at the European Council (EUCO) meeting, where he met with the German Chancellor. To further complicate matters, in early May, two months after that incident, Trump himself threatened both Spain and Germany due to their lack of support in the Iran war. Specifically, the US president declared that his government was “looking at and analyzing the possible reduction of troops in Germany,” specifically 5,000 troops, in reaction to comments by Merz in which he had criticized the war in Iran and stated that the United States was being “humiliated” by the prolongation of the conflict. The following day, when asked by the press at the White House if he planned to do the same with Spain and Italy, Trump replied: “Yes, probably. Why shouldn’t I? Italy hasn’t been of any help to us, and Spain has been horrible, absolutely horrible.” Albares's travel program also includes a meeting with German Hispanists at the Spanish Embassy in Berlin, a second meeting with analysts from German think tanks, and a lecture by the minister at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin on the future of Europe.

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