An unexpected career move by Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s outgoing foreign minister, is angering both UN diplomats and German politicians.
Baerbock has pushed aside German top diplomat 64-year-old Helga Schmid, who was expected to get the role. Schmid previously worked as the general secretary of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) from 2021 to 2024 and has spent almost a year preparing for her expected new role at the UN. She reportedly met with more than a hundred UN ambassadors.
However, on March 19, it was reported that the German government had decided to nominate the 44-year-old Greens Party politician as the president of the United Nations General Assembly for the 2025/26 period. Baerbock is expected to take up the post in New York in June 2025.
The president of the general assembly is regarded as the second-most important position in the United Nations after the general secretary. The president organises and directs the meetings of the assembly and has to watch that all members can have their say as well as organise majorities behind the scenes ahead of important votes – a job requiring great diplomatic talent.
However, the Greens Party lost the February 2025 election and will not be part of the future German government, meaning foreign minister Baerbock now needs another job. After the outgoing German government retracted Schmid’s nomination, all her previous diplomatic work was in vain.
UN diplomats are now furious with Germany over the surprise exchange as German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel reports quoting from internal chat messages. “Germany has wasted our time”, one diplomat allegedly wrote. Another reportedly complained that this showed how little respect Germany had for the United Nations as a whole. “Baerbock’s appointment will reinforce the impression that powerful states are abusing key UN positions for their own purposes”, the diplomat said.
German diplomats share the anger of their international colleagues. Christoph Heusgen, a former German UN ambassador, said: “It cannot be that the United Nations are seen as a self-service supermarket.” He commended Helga Schmid as “the ideal candidate to hold together the 193 states of the general assembly”. Baerbock herself was a “polarising person”. Heusgen continued that one UN colleagues had told him with regard to Baerbock swooping in to claim the top job for herself: “We thought something like that only happens in authoritarian states.”
Most Germans are equally unenthused by Baerbock’s surprise takeover of the UN top job. In a survey by pollster YouGov 57 per cent of respondents said they saw the Greens politician’s nomination as “negative” or “rather negative”. Only 28 per cent regarded it as positive.
