Post-COVID economies must be more sustainable: German Chancellor

The COVID-19 pandemic has made governments around the world more aware of the fact that economies have to be developed sustainably and not at the expense of the environment, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday.

“There is a will to learn from the pandemic and to make the economy more sustainable,” Merkel told journalists on Sunday following the G20 summit.

Merkel announced her support for an EU proposal for a global pandemic contract but warned against forgetting about developing countries as the globe’s wealthier nations jostle to get access to COVID-19 vaccines.

Merkel said Germany was in contact with GAVI, the vaccine alliance, but expressed her concern that negotiations for vaccines for poorer countries hadn’t begun yet.

The German chancellor dismissed U.S. President Donald Trump’s objection to the Paris Agreement and said the differences of opinion between the EU and the U.S. on climate protection were ‘nothing new.’