US President Joe Biden is to head to Germany late next week, just days after cancelling a previously planned visit due to a severe hurricane in the state of Florida.
Biden, who leaves office early next year, is planning a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Berlin on Friday, government sources in Berlin told dpa.
There has been no official confirmation from Washington.
Biden had originally planned the trip for last Friday and Saturday, but cancelled at short notice amid forecasts of widespread devastation from Hurricane Milton hitting the east coast of the United States.
Biden had planned to spend two and a half days in Germany and visit the US military's Ramstein Air Base in the west of the country to hold a 50-nation summit on military aid to Ukraine. He had then planned to travel on to Angola.
The Ukraine summit has yet to be rescheduled.
The visit to Germany was originally set to be a formal state visit with an official banquet and other ceremonial events, but the programme has now been greatly condensed to a brief working visit, sources told dpa.
However, according to Der Spiegel magazine, Steinmeier still plans to award 81-year-old Biden Germany's highest honour to an individual, the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit, for his services to German-American friendship.
And there will still be a reception with military honours at the president's Bellevue Palace in Berlin, while a Biden-Scholz press conference is still likely to take place.
Biden bids farewell as Germany nervously awaits election
This will be Biden's first bilateral visit to Germany in his four-year term of office, and is seen as a farewell meeting by the outgoing US leader.
Although Biden attended the G7 summit in Elmau in 2022 and made refuelling stops with his government plane at the American military base in Ramstein on other occasions, he did not make a solo trip to Germany.
On January 20, Biden will leave office and be replaced by former president Donald Trump or current Vice President Kamala Harris. Americans go to the polls to decide the neck-and-neck race on November 5.
The election could have significant consequences for relations. As president, Trump had put Berlin under massive pressure because of its trade surplus, what he sees as low military spending, and the now-defunct Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Germany and Russia.
Almost two-thirds of Germans see Trump as a danger to relations
Almost two-thirds of Germans, or 62%, expect a deterioration in relations between Berlin and Washington if Trump returns to power, according to a recent survey by the polling institute YouGov on behalf of dpa.
Only 10% think that Germany's relationship with the US will improve if the Republican wins the election. Nineteen per cent expect it to remain about the same.
If Harris becomes president, only 9% expect German-American relations to deteriorate, while 35% believe that relations between the two NATO partners would tend to improve. Some 44% assume that it would remain about the same.
Brussels, Berlin, Istanbul: Scholz on tight schedule
Biden's visit presents the German Chancellery with scheduling challenges. Scholz will probably have to return to Berlin earlier from the EU summit in Brussels planned for Thursday and Friday.
However, his visit to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Istanbul, planned for Saturday, is to go ahead as planned.
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