Biden to visit Berlin next week to make up for cancelled trip

US President Joe Biden is set 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, sources have told dpa and German's news magazine Spiegel.

Biden is said to be planning a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Berlin on Friday. There has been no official confirmation of this so far, however.

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 previously 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 summit on military aid to Ukraine. He had then planned to travel on to Angola.

The visit to Germany was originally set to be a formal state visit with an official banquet and other formal events, but the programme has now been greatly condensed, Spiegel reports.

However, Steinmeier reportedly still plans to award Biden a special medal, the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit, for his services to German-American friendship.

This will be Biden's first bilateral visit to Germany in his four-year term of office. Although the US President 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.

The outgoing president now wants to make up for this, shortly before leaving the White House in January.