Welcome
Statement by Coordinator of Transatlantic Cooperation Michael Link prior to his first official visit to Canada and talks in New York
Canada is one of our closest allies and a cornerstone of the transatlantic partnership. During my first official visit to Ottawa, I would like to explore the potential for intensifying cooperation. Our Canadian partners will also want to find out more about the state of ratification of the free trade agreement CETA in the course of our talks.
In New York, my aim will be to support our first-rate cultural relations and education policy and to identify possible ways of deepening academic and non-academic exchange in my talks.
All talks during my trip will take place against the backdrop of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. I therefore want to explain Germany’s positions, from sanctions to the security-policy watershed set out in detail in the Bundestag on Friday, to my various interlocutors and the press.
Background information:
Michael Link, the Coordinator of Transatlantic Cooperation and Member of the German Bundestag, will first of all travel to Ottawa today (6 June) for political talks with, among others, representatives of Parliament and the Government. Furthermore, an exchange with representatives of think tanks and civil society is planned.
After travelling on to New York, he will visit various institutions in the sphere of cultural relations and education policy as well as the Leo Baeck Institute, where the fight against antisemitism will be one of the issues on the agenda. A meeting with the alumni network of the New York offices of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation – DFG), the universities of Freiburg, Heidelberg, Cologne, Campus OWL, UA Ruhr and UAS7, as well as talks with the Institute of International Education on exchange programmes, are also scheduled.