German Chancellor Angela Merkel Addresses Joint Session Of Congress

November 3, 2009 6:42 a.m. EST

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - Chancellor Angela Merkel addresses a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, becoming the first German head of government to do so in half a century. Her speech marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall as well as her re-election for a second term as chancellor. Also on top of her agenda is a key United Nations climate conference next month in Copenhagen.

Merkel speaks before lawmakers at 10:30 am ET. She meets with President Barack Obama at the Oval Office of the White House before her address, the first from a German chancellor since Konrad Adenauer spoke before the two chambers of Congress in 1957.

The 55-year-old Merkel, who became the first woman and East German chancellor in 2005, won her second term on Sept. 28, less than two days after she met with Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other leaders of the most industrialized and emerging economies in Pittsburgh for a G20 Summit to secure consensus and continue coordinated steps to ensure recovery from the global financial crisis.

Her coalition government was sworn in last week, a center-right administration because support for Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union in the general elections was enough for her to drop a partnership with the SPD, Germany's oldest political party, and form a new one with the pro- business Free Democratis (FDP).

During her visit to the Capitol, Merkel is expected to continue resume discussions on climate change that began in New York in September, when the U.N. held a summit.

Obama made his maiden speech before the U.N. at the time, declaring, "Those rapidly-growing developing nations that will produce nearly all the growth in global carbon emissions in the decades ahead must do their part as well. Some of these nations have already made great strides with the development and deployment of clean energy... We cannot meet this challenge unless all the largest emitters of greenhouse gas pollution act together. There is no other way."

World leaders have been in talks led about a new framework to replace the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012. The U.N. holds a two-day conference on Dec. 11 in Copenhagen to secure an agreement.

Germany and the United States, as part of the G8, adopted a 2°C global warming limit in July. That G8 summit in Italy also yielded "unprecedented commitments" from the 16-member Major Economies Forum and other developing nations on the goal of reducing greenhouse emissions by half by 2050. The emissions target includes an 80 percent reduction by industrialized nations, a concession China and India had refused to accept.