How lovely it is to be here with you at last! It is more than two years since the global COVID-19 pandemic forced me to postpone my long-planned visit to Mexico. We wanted to meet then as friends – and we had no idea how much the world would change in those two years. Our friendship, however, has not changed, and I am very glad about that.
The pandemic made us aware of just how closely the nations of the world are interconnected, and, above all, of how much we depend on each other. It showed us how important dialogue is in view of this interdependence. However, it made something else clear as well: the world we have been gifted is fragile. In order to preserve it, we need friendships built on a solid, shared foundation. And friendships have to be nurtured.
Because it is dialogue above all that makes for friendship. It is above all an awareness of the other’s situation and viewpoint, from which one can arrive at shared positions – but also understand and acknowledge differing standpoints.
It is good to know that our friendship with Mexico stands on just such a solid foundation. For decades, our countries have stood side by side in both the political and the economic context. Our economic relations are strong and close: over 2100 German companies operate in Mexico, employing some 300,000 people, and I am pleased that many of them are young people, many of them trainees, learning and working in our dual system of vocational training. There are just under 470 cooperation partnerships between higher education institutions in Mexico and Germany. And German companies, too, value the great potential demonstrated by this country, by its young people, in research and development. Our two countries share close ties – seventy years of diplomatic relations speak for themselves – and Mexico is an important, highly valued partner for us. The aim must be to keep this partnership fit for the future. And so it would be very gratifying if the modernised Global Agreement between Mexico and the European Union could at last be concluded soon.
I am not only thankful that we can again meet in person; I am also thankful for the honour of being able to speak to you in this very place today – in the Mexican Senate, the heart of your democracy, whose constitution is older than Germany’s.
La Patria es primero
– this is the motto under which you gather in this House. In Berlin, inscribed below the gable of our parliament building, is the motto To the German people
. I am sure that you here in Mexico City will feel the same way we do in the Reichstag building in Berlin: when you stand up to speak in a House devoted to these words, you feel pride – pride in your own country, but above all pride in such a home of democracy.
You feel the mandate given you by the electorate. The mandate to ensure a life in peace and security. And in these weeks and months in particular, you feel a truly great responsibility to defend the achievements of democracy. We know that we have to defend our fundamental democratic values, human rights and the rule of law every single day, internally within our own countries, against enemies who are challenging our liberal order. Freedom, democracy, the striving for social security, the responsibility for these – all of that unites us. This responsibility also charges us not to let ourselves, not to let us democracies, be divided.
In truth, Russia’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine really has shocked all of us who believe in freedom and the right of every country to territorial self-determination. If this right is cast into doubt, if even borders are cast into doubt, then what we are facing is a watershed. Every day since the start of the war, since 24 February, people in Ukraine have been killed; wives are losing their husbands, children their parents, parents their children.
This brutal violation of the rules by Putin affects not only Europe, but all of us: anyone who tries to normalise border violations and land seizures is opening a Pandora’s box and ultimately is endangering the entire world. He is thus abandoning for ever the path Benito Juárez was following when he said that peace means respect for the rights of others.
If we, Germans and Mexicans, are to emerge stronger from this conflict, if the democratic world is to emerge stronger from this conflict, then we must now maintain a common line. We must be united in our response to an aggressor who is trying to replace the strength of the law with the law of the strong. If all we democrats stand together, we can resist the mechanisms of escalation.
Unity and a broad-based partnership, knowledge sharing and close mutual economic ties make us more resilient against autocrats and unpredictable actors. And resilient is precisely what our democracies, but also our economies, must become, given the number of crises piling up before us.
We are seeing the repercussions of climate change in real time. In Europe we are seeing catastrophic flooding and, this summer, unprecedented drought. You are likewise familiar with the problem of a tremendous lack of water in the north of your country. The increasing number of destructive extreme weather events and the devastation they cause make it clear that slowing global warming as quickly as possible is nothing less than a question of survival.
Before coming to the House today, I had the opportunity on the Zócalo to admire the traces of the Templo Mayor. It was not only a deeply impressive sight, but also a moving one. Seeing this powerful testimony to your indigenous high culture was a humbling experience. The remaining traces of the ofrendas reveal how widely connected with the world the inhabitants of Tenochtitlan were, even then, thanks to their trade relations. The historic foundation on which your country stands was and still is great and multifaceted.
There is amazing diversity in your landscape, too. People from all around the world, and especially from Germany, come to admire and get to know your incomparably beautiful country: the mangrove forests of Sian Ka’an, the Cascada de Basaseachi waterfall in Chihuahua, the cenotes in Yucatán. You possess immense treasures. The huge diversity of species in your country, the inhabitants’ knowledge, passed down across so many generations, of the flora, fauna, clearance and cultivation of your homeland – all this together forms part of these treasures.
When the German scholar and explorer Alexander von Humboldt travelled through your country, the word biodiversity
was unknown. It was not yet clear how important global biodiversity is for the stability of our Earth. It was Humboldt who first taught us Europeans that every single one of us living on this planet must be concerned with what happens in others’ worlds. From his research trips to South America, Central America and particularly Mexico, he brought back the essential recognition that the world in which we live is a macrocosm. What happens on one continent is not without consequences for other continents. The actions of the individual affect the well-being of all. With their knowledge of a cosmos in which all things were connected, the indigenous peoples of Mexico were many centuries ahead of us Europeans.
Now, over 200 years after Alexander von Humboldt returned from his tremendous journey, it is vital for our common future that we regard environment policy not only as part of security policy but particularly as part of social policy, too. That is why I am so pleased that the Mexican Government is committed to protecting biodiversity and the environment, even more so than it has been in the past. We are all grateful that Mexico is a pioneer in seeking an international biodiversity agenda for the United Nations. We are grateful that you are protecting your country’s vast treasures for the benefit of the whole of humanity.
In doing so, you are in fact protecting the livelihoods of all people, whether they live in Mexico City or Berlin, Islamabad, Kyiv or Moscow. I firmly believe that if we work together, we can slow down climate change with its repercussions – if we work together to build bridges of innovation, dialogue and solidarity.
Our goal must be to leave our young people a world that is habitable and worth living in. What our children’s world will look like depends on each and every one of us. Not only do we need global courage for change: there is a global duty to change, in order to ensure a liveable future for our descendants. Democratic partners, such as Germany and Mexico, bear their share of responsibility for this.
Only by acting together can we resolve crises. Only by acting together can we preserve or, where it has been lost, restore peace. And only by acting together can we find responses to other major challenges of our time.
Precisely at this difficult time, what we Germans want is not less, but more partnership with Mexico. We want not only to maintain but to expand our social, political and, not least, economic ties. That is why I am here – and that is why I thank you for the honour of addressing the Senate. Those who share the same fundamental convictions, those who trust and support each other, can journey together.
It does not matter if they do not all take the same route. Because every country has its own traditions and its own culture. What is crucial is that they all keep their eye fixed on the goal. And that is precisely what we intend to do.