Politics of Germany

European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs Pierre Moscovici will visit Athens on January 16, according to media reports on Friday.

Even though his agenda will be mainly political, the problems of Greek banks are expected to be discussed on his two-day visit and he is also expected to meet with representatives of the country's credit system, as well as political leaders.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Germany will take on greater responsibility internationally in 2019, and keep pushing for global solutions to the challenges of climate change, migration and "terrorism", reported Aljazeera. 

Only seven of 1,500 refugees that Greece agreed to take back from Germany as part of a bilateral agreement in August have been returned, according to data from the German Interior Ministry.

The deal concerned refugees in Germany who had originally applied for asylum in Greece.

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a close ally of Angela Merkel, won a tight race to succeed her as party leader Friday, seeing off a longtime rival of the German chancellor, reports AFP. 

The contest, which required a runoff vote to secure a 52-percent majority for AKK as she is known, is expected to increase the likelihood that Merkel will be able to see out her fourth term until 2021.

Germany's largest and dominant political party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is holding a crucial vote to elect a new leader this coming weekend after Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would not run for the post and effectively started to wind down her political career, writes CNBC.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Dec. 4 awarded two Turkish immigrants with the German Order of Merit for their voluntary work and their services to the culture of remembrance.

A series of developments on the European level, and not just fiscal outperformance in Greece, influenced the Euro Working Group (EWG) decision last Thursday to give Athens the green light to suspend the reduction of 1.2 million pensions in a way that would not generate reactions in European capitals.

The woman campaigning to succeed Angela Merkel as head of Germany's Christian Democrats (CDU), said she may consider quotas to get more women in parliament, as she positioned herself for a party election in December.

She told journalists in Potsdam that now the British parliament and MPs of the remaining 27 EU member states are analyzing the deal.

"I am very happy that it was possible to come up with a proposal after long and not easy negotiations," Merkel said.

The German chancellor has not commented on resignations in the UK government after reaching the agreement, the AP said.

When it comes to political heavyweights in Europe, the German chancellor has long been top of the list.