The official account of the German Foreign Office has tweeted a statement by its head, Heiko Maas, on Brexit negotiations and discussions over the Irish border, promising that Germany and the entire EU would stand by Ireland on the backstop and would not allow it to be isolated on the issue.
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The resoluteness of the message did not seem to have an effect. The ministry replaced the name of the country for a flag emoji, but picked the wrong one – namely, the flag of the Ivory Coast, which has green, white and orange stripes like Ireland, but in reverse order.
The slip was too good to overlook it. The reaction was merciless and hilarious, with netizens calling “to stand by Ivory Coast”.
Soon, the gaffe evolved into a proper war of flags.
To the German diplomats’ credit, they did not rush to delete the unfortunate mix-up, which incidentally occurred only on its English-language account, but instead took the feast of sarcasm to a whole new level.
Those responsible for the ministry’s social media presence eagerly responded to commenters with some witty comments of their own.
The ministry even took the opportunity to give the commenters a lesson in diplomacy.