Angel Merkel: '˜close co-operation' with Trump possible

German Chancellor Angela Merkel gives a statement to the media following the victory by U.S. Republican candidate Donald Trump in U.S. presidential elections. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Mrs Merkel told reporters in Berlin that the campaign which ended in Mr Trump’s victory featured “confrontations that were difficult to bear”.

Mrs Merkel stressed Germany’s close historical connection with the United States. She said: “Germany and America are connected by values: democracy, freedom, respect for the law and for the dignity of human beings, independently of origin, skin colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political views.”

She added: “On the basis of these values, I am offering the future president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, close co-operation.”

She said the partnership with the US “is a foundation stone of German foreign policy.”

A senior ally of Mrs Merkel said Germany “must also work together as well as possible with Mr Trump as the new US president”.

Volker Kauder, the parliamentary caucus leader of Mrs Merkel’s conservative Union bloc, said that a “close trans-Atlantic partnership continues to be of central significance for Germany and Europe in the coming years”.

Mr Kauder pointed out that Germans and the US share the same set of values and that “especially now we need to work on keeping up the good relations to the US”.

German defence minister Ursula von der Leyen, who also belongs to Mrs Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats party, had called the vote in the US “a big shock” earlier on Wednesday.

She said that while many questions remain open, “we Europeans obviously know that as partners in the Nato, Donald Trump will naturally ask, ‘what are you achieving for the alliance’, but we will also ask, ‘what’s your stand toward the alliance’”.