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Merkel awarded Peruvian gold medal at Lima Summit

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been awarded the honorific del Sol, or Sun Order, medal of Peru on her recent visit to South America.

Published: 17 May 2008 10:36 CEST

Merkel awarded Peruvian gold medal at Lima Summit

The two leaders embrace. Photo: DPA

Merkel is the third German politician to receive the prestigious medal, hand crafted from solid gold, joining past Chancellors Ludwig Erhard (CDU) and Willy Brandt (SPD).

Merkel is one of 27 European representatives of industry and commerce attending the Lima Summit this month along with 33 South American leaders, to discuss EU and Latin American relations.

The German Chancellor has proved to be a prominent representative of Europe at the conference, despite controversial remarks from Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, who recently claimed that Merkel was a political descendent of Hitler.

In a turn around Chavez offered his hand to Merkel in front of the National museum of Lima on Friday, warmly greeting her and offering his apologies.

“I have told the German chancellor, if I was too hard on you please forgive me. I offer you my hand.” Chavez later explained, reported German daily Der Tagesspiegel.

Merkel accepted the Venezuelan’s hand shake, but was eager to focus on the main issues of how the two continents can work together to fight poverty and climate change.

One major concern is the unrivaled production of biofuels in South America that could have drastic effects on the Amazon rain forest. As one of the planet’s largest CO2 reducing areas, plans to clear parts of the rain forest worry world leaders, as the plants’ reduction of global CO2 levels would be greatly effected.

Merkel hopes the Summit will be a chance to develop relations between the 60 cities of the EU and Latin America attending the Lima meeting.

“It’s a chance for the two continents to move closer to each other,” she said before her trip to Lima.

This years’ Lima summit was the fifth time that representatives of the European Union and Latin America have met.

The EU invests approximately €500 million in the South American continent each year.

Scholz says attacks on deputies 'threaten' democracy

Scholz denounced the attack as a “threat” to democracy and the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell also sounded the alarm.

Police said four unknown attackers beat up Matthias Ecke, an MEP for the Social Democratic Party (SPD), as he put up EU election posters in the eastern city of Dresden on Friday night.

Ecke, 41, was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said. Police confirmed he needed hospital treatment.

“Democracy is threatened by this kind of act,” Scholz told a congress of European socialist parties in Berlin, saying such attacks result from “discourse, the atmosphere created from pitting people against each other”.

“We must never accept such acts of violence… we must oppose it together.”

Borrell, posting on X, formerly Twitter, also condemned the attack.

“We’re witnessing unacceptable episodes of harassment against political representatives and growing far-right extremism that reminds us of dark times of the past,” he wrote.

“It cannot be tolerated nor underestimated. We must all defend democracy.”

The investigation is being led by the state protection services, highlighting the political link suspected by police.

“If an attack with a political motive… is confirmed just a few weeks from the European elections, this serious act of violence would also be a serious act against democracy,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement.

This would be “a new dimension of anti-democratic violence”, she added.

Series of attacks

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s EU election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police added that a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had earlier been “punched” and “kicked” in the same Dresden street. The same attackers were suspected.

Faeser said “extremists and populists are stirring up a climate of increasing violence”.

The SPD highlighted the role of the far-right “AfD party and other right-wing extremists” in increased tensions.

“Their supporters are now completely uninhibited and clearly view us democrats as game,” said Henning Homann and Kathrin Michel, regional SPD leaders.

Armin Schuster, interior minister in Saxony, where an important regional vote is due to be held in September, said 112 acts of political violence linked to the elections have been recorded there since the beginning of the year.

Of that number, 30 were directed against people holding political office of one kind or another.

“What is really worrying is the intensity with which these attacks are currently increasing,” he said on Saturday.

On Thursday two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and one was hit in the face, police said.

Last Saturday, dozens of demonstrators surrounded parliament deputy speaker Katrin Goering-Eckardt, also a Greens lawmaker, in her car in eastern Germany. Police reinforcements had to clear a route for her to get away.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

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