Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be awarded the Order of Merit for Germany in April. This was announced on Tuesday, March 28, by the agency DPA.
It is specified that Merkel will receive an order of a special degree, namely the Grand Cross in a special design. Only Konrad Adenauer, who was Chancellor of Germany from 1949-1963, and Helmut Kohl, who was Chancellor from 1982-1998, were awarded this special degree.
It is noted that the award is scheduled for April 17. Merkel will be presented with the award by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. It is reported that the ceremony is planned to be attended by a number of ministers with whom Merkel worked while serving as chancellor.
Merkel held this post for 16 years – from 2005 to 2021.
In September 2021, Merkel gave way to the leader of the Social Democrats, Olaf Scholz, who became the new Chancellor of Germany. It is known that after leaving office, the ex-head of government receives a pension (65% of his salary, which is about €15 thousand) and manages a private office with a small staff. At the same time, she pays for her private trips on her own and still has the right to protection at the expense of the state.
On September 8, 2022, it was reported that the book of political memoirs of the ex-Chancellor of Germany would be published in autumn 2024. Merkel writes a book of memoirs together with her long-term assistant, the head of the bureau of the former chancellor, Beate Bauman. The book will be simultaneously published in the USA, Canada, Great Britain and many other countries.
In January 2023, it became known that Merkel did not accept the offer of UN Secretary General António Guterres to work in the organization. It was clarified that Guterres offered her to head a “high-level advisory body on global public goods.”
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