Status: 01/19/2022 11:34 a.m
Former Chancellor Merkel has turned down an offer to chair a UN advisory body. The Panel on Global Public Goods is one of Secretary-General Guterres’ flagship projects on UN reform.
Former Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected the job offer from UN Secretary-General António Guterres from New York. Merkel had “telephoned the UN Secretary-General last week, thanked him and informed him that she would not accept the offer,” Merkel’s office told the dpa news agency on request.
In a letter, Guterres offered the 67-year-old the chair of a high-level advisory body on global public goods that could 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.
Panel is part of a UN reform
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.
Merkel’s approval was considered unlikely
At the United Nations, the likelihood that she would accept the job offer from the UN headquarters on New York’s East River had previously been assessed as rather low.