Addressing a crowd at an election rally in Munich, Merkel said that in the last few days, she had "experienced" that Germany and other European countries no longer can "completely rely on others."
On Thursday, Merkel attended the one-day NATO summit in Brussels, spending Friday and Saturday in Italy's Sicilian town of Taormina where the two-day G7 summit took place.
"We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands," she stressed, adding that Germany and other European countries would do their best to stay on good terms with the US and the post-Brexit UK. "We have to fight for our own destiny."
Here's the video of Merkel's speech in Munich saying that Europe can't rely on the US & the UK anymore and "must take destiny in own hands". pic.twitter.com/dq8cUOeT37
— Yannis Koutsomitis (@YanniKouts) May 28, 2017
Trump has repeatedly threatened to withdraw from the Paris accord that was concluded in 2015 between 194 countries as the full compliance with the agreement would reduce US GDP by $2.5 trillion over the next decade, explaining that it means "factories and plants closing all over the country."
The Paris climate agreement within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, championed by former US President Barack Obama, was ratified by 143 countries. It aims to hold the increase in average global temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial level by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, with all the signatory states agreeing to reduce or limit their greenhouse gas emissions.
