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German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on Thursday is meeting with fellow foreign ministers from the “G4” grouping of nations, comprising Germany, Brazil, Japan and India, all of which support each other’s bids for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
US, China, Russia, Britain and France all have permanent seats, and expanding the Security Council is a topic that’s been discussed on and off for decades.
But it is broadly seen as a non-starter given the need for all five existing permanent members, often with competing interests, to find consensus on any potential reform.
On Wednesday, following a meeting of the Security Council at the UN General Assembly, Baerbock said that Germany could “imagine being a permanent member.”
“But not out of self-interest, but in the course of a major modernization which, on the whole, takes greater account of the realities of the 21st century,” she later added, referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In his opening address to the Security Council on Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Germany should be granted a permanent seat, arguing that the country had become “one of the key guarantors of peace and security.”
Poland said Thursday it opposes a permanent German seat on the Security Council, with Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak calling the suggestion from Zelenskyy a “great disappointment,” while alleging that Germany had dithered on supporting Ukraine in the early days of Russia’s invasion.
Poland’s conservative government has previously called for Germany to pay over $1 trillion in World War IIreparations. Warsaw is also in the midst of a dispute with Kyiv over grain exports at present.
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