The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will visit Paris and the EU and NATO headquarters on Friday, with Russia's tensions and climate in the spotlight for his first foreign trip since he took office this week.
Germany's new leader has pledged continuity with his predecessor Angela Merkel, who stepped down Wednesday after 16 years in power.
Scholz took power with a new coalition of Greens and business-friendly Free Democrats, which has agreed to strengthen Europe's strategic sovereignty. His first official trip will take him to France where he will meet President Emmanuel Macron.
He will be in Brussels for a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, EU Chief Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel ahead of a bloc summit next week.
The European response to the pandemic and the climate crisis, growing calls for a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics in China and Russian troop build-up on Ukraine's border are set to dominate discussions.
Scholz warned Moscow on Thursday of the consequences of the North Stream 2 pipeline, a Russian project to deliver natural gas to Germany and a major source of friction with many partners.
As Western powers threaten to punish new sanctions against Moscow, the project could play a central role.
With Nord Stream 2, Germany has the big geopolitical weapon in its hand without ever seeking it, according to analyst Ulrich Speck of the German Marshall Fund.
The Greens said in Paris Thursday that Berlin would set its policy on Russia and China in close consultation with European allies, as well as setting the groundwork for the visit.
She praises French plans to reform carbon taxation when Paris takes over the EU presidency in January, while hailing the Paris climate accord as a stellar moment in international diplomacy, Baerbock stressed that her ministry would now lead Berlin on future multilateral climate initiatives, as she underlined the centrality of the rule of law and human rights in the EU ahead of a stop in Poland Friday.
She acknowledged that Germany, which will shut down all of its atomic power plants by next year for safety reasons, did not see eye-to- eye with France in its bid to name nuclear as a suitable energy source to meet Europe's net-zero climate goal.
Scholz, a centrist Social Democrats, is a known entity, having served as Merkel's finance minister and vice chancellor.
He has long supported Germany's trademark austerity goals, but he has thrown his weight behind massive government spending to help Europe cope with the Pandemic, going further than Merkel.
Anne Gellinek, of the public broadcaster ZDF, said that Europe senses that Scholz is more likely to continue the course of Merkel on the European Stability and Growth Pact and its strict debt rules.
Scholz is expected to face renewed calls for Germany to match its economic weight with more responsibility in global security affairs.
The pledge to all NATO member states to commit two percent of their GDP to defence by the year 2024 is not mentioned in the new coalition pact.
Yves Le Drian, a sham French Foreign Minister Yves Le Drian, asked for more German support in foreign missions, including operations against jihadist groups in the Sahel region, saying Berlin had an important role in the cooperation with Paris on security policy under Scholz, but in the long run it will commit three percent of the spending to military, diplomacy and development aid in the long run, a clause already attacked by Merkel's conservatives.
With the French presidential elections looming next year, Berlin will probably take a wait and see stance on projects, especially considering the threat of a strong showing for the far right.