As a consultant
Job offer for Merkel: UN boss Guterres apparently wants the ex-chancellor for the United Nations
UN chief António Guterres (right) would like Angela Merkel to work as a consultant at the United Nations
© Wolfgang Kumm / DPA
After 16 years as chancellor, Angela Merkel is retired. Nevertheless, she is in demand: UN chief António Guterres apparently wants the former chancellor for a consulting job. So far, however, Merkel has not responded to the offer.
Former Chancellor Angela Merkel has a job offer from New York: UN chief António Guterres would like to win the 67-year-old for an advisory role at the United Nations. As the German Press Agency learned from UN circles, Guterres offered Merkel the chair of a high-level advisory body on global public goods, which should potentially serve the entire world population across national borders. Examples of global public goods are the ozone layer, but also, depending on the definition, internationally applicable regulations such as those on flight safety and global trade.
Accordingly, Guterres made the offer in a letter to Merkel – who left Germany in December after 16 years as head of government. At the United Nations, however, the likelihood that she will accept the job offer from the UN headquarters on New York’s East River is considered to be rather low. An answer from Merkel is not yet available, it said. Officially, representatives of the United Nations did not want to comment on the offer.
Angela Merkel in Guterres’ flagship project?
The Advisory Board on Global Public Goods is one of Guterres’ flagship projects on United Nations reform in his second term, which began in early January. In his report on transforming the UN last year, the secretary-general wrote: “I will ask a high-level advisory board, led by former leaders, to identify global public goods and other areas of common concern where improvements in governance are most urgently needed required are.”
According to Guterres, the corona pandemic has revealed major gaps in international cooperation. The envisaged advisory body should provide impetus for renewing practices and principles for action on a global level.