Your Excellency, honourable Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Hua Chunying,
Excellencies,
Dear Guests,

Honoured guests, this year we are celebrating 35 years since the peaceful reunification of Germany in 1990.

It is a joyful occasion – but also a moment for contemplation, as the 35th anniversary of German reunification falls in the same year as the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. This year, we also remember the terror and the horror that Germany brought down on Europe and the world during the Second World War.

To this day, the Second World War has left traumas and wounds across the globe, persisting through the generations – not only in Europe but here in Asia too. In China, millions of people suffered and died fighting the Japanese aggressors. We owe the many victims our respect and our sympathy.

For Germany, that insight is nothing new; it has shaped our history. In a year of historic anniversaries, it is essential to remember the crucial milestones of the past.

The Second World War ended in 1945, but that did not mean peace, neither in Germany and Europe, nor in China. The world was faced with a new confrontation: the Cold War between East and West. What was more, that war could only really be called „cold“ for parts of Europe. Elsewhere, including Asia, „hot“ wars continued to occur.

At the same time, 1945 saw the first attempt at a global fresh start, namely the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco. The 50 founding members were convinced that only a new global order, with codified fundamental principles and forums for international cooperation, could make peace possible in future.

The United Nations’ mission to maintain international peace and security has lost none of its significance. The fundamental principles of the UN Charter, such as refraining from the use of force, settling disputes peacefully, and protecting sovereignty and territorial integrity, are as relevant now as they were 80 years ago.

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Also at that time, an unprecedented reconciliation process began at the European level – one that is very important to me as a committed European and former EU ambassador. Erstwhile enemies – Germany and France; Germany and Poland – managed to reconcile and made the leap to start afresh as friendly neighbours. As Germans, we are especially grateful for that.

As those developments demonstrate clearly, doggedly grappling for peace has its reward. Few other events have made this clearer to us Germans than the peaceful revolution of 1989, which heralded the end of the Cold War and the process of German reunification. It was driven by people in East Germany and their yearning for peace, freedom and prosperity. Also pivotal were the historically extraordinary decisions of certain individuals – particularly, in the end, Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev – not to use force to suppress the peaceful calls for reform and a return to the true independence of states in Eastern Europe.

After the collapse of the Iron Curtain, the European Community in the West was transformed into the pan-European peace project of the European Union, with the aim of stabilising Eastern European states through political and economic integration and resolving conflicts.

Simultaneously, the end of the Cold War allowed the international community to embark on an era of cooperation to tackle global challenges – a peace project 2.0. The global conferences of the 1990s, the foundation of the International Criminal Court, the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement were fuelled by international consensus on working together to combat hunger, poverty, climate change and discrimination and ensure that crimes against international law would not go unpunished. The Beijing World Conference on Women in 1995, to which I was privileged to contribute as Chair of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, gave women all over the world hope for gender equality.

Eighty years since the Second World War and 35 years since German reunification, that optimism and sense of momentum have flown.

Europe today is dominated by Russia’s brutal war of aggression in violation of international law in its fourth year. Every Russian drone headed for Ukraine, Poland or any other country also takes aim at the European and international peace order.

Protecting that peace order, ending that war of aggression, is the responsibility of all the permanent members of the Security Council – including China. Any support for Russia’s war economy, whether military, financial or material, prolongs the loss of life, not least among innocent civilians.

Internationally, the UN system is crumbling as respect for international law and the multilateral order declines: look at the ending of disarmament treaties; withdrawal from the Paris Agreement; hybrid and aggressive, including military, action against others; the terrorism and hostage-taking of Hamas; the military offensive and famine in Gaza. Neither the Security Council nor UNICEF or the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs are fully capable of fulfilling their functions.

Germany and China have benefited from common WTO rules. Today, however, fair, rules-based trade is under threat. Instead of being dismantled, barriers to trade are being erected – in the form of tariffs, in the form of export restrictions. Subsidies and restricted market access debilitate fair competition. It remains clear to us that we need a free global economy with reliable rules, or everyone will lose prosperity.

It is true that institutions created in 1945 don’t reflect the world of today.

But multilateral institutions that are fit for the future are essential for peaceful coexistence on a shrinking planet, and they must give all states a fair say. For that, we need reform – of the UN, of the Security Council, of the international finance and trade architecture. Germany is campaigning for such reform, and we hope to achieve it as a candidate for joining the Security Council from 2027.

Eighty years after the Second World War, we are once again at a fork in the road. Let us not forget that each generation must achieve peace and prosperity anew. We need a peace project 3.0.

We stand ready to work with all the like-minded and to help build a rejuvenated, sustainable peace order fit for the future.